Severa recognized the devices strewn about the room she and Lia stood in. Sirius had versions of them throughout his lab, he called them Rune Processors, but she had heard other terms throughout the multiverse. Computers were the most common one, though they came in so many forms it was hardly a descriptive term. Some were almost like tiny pianos in how you interacted with them, while others felt more like steam engines, covered in levers and switches. Sirius of course tried to be more impressive, with invisible panels and floating runes that required complex hand movements to operate. Sort of like a built in security system.

These systems however were much more simple. They had a simple panel where the hand was placed, and they took telepathic instruction, as if they were more like creatures than technology. Lia put Severa’s hand on the panel and a rush of information come flooding in.

Severa was being taken into Lia’s memories at a blistering pace. Seeing her childhood, growing up with her family as they moved from community to community, being ostracized each time their psychic abilities were revealed. She saw glimpses of Ithan’s involvement with the self proclaimed warriors of light, and the confusing magic that seemed to have muddled Lia and Ithan’s growth into adults and general timeline. She saw them tracking Polaris Eridanus through time, ensuring that he reached his intended destinations in the timeline. He was a crucial piece to many events, and whole universes had collapsed from errors in his timeline. Ithan and Lia had known that, and Ithan’s very life had been ultimately sacrificed in those efforts, though none besides Lia, and now Severa, would ever know that.

“Lia, you are actually alive?” Severa had to ask. Lia looked more like a ghost than a living being, but seemed tangible. Though it wouldn’t be the first time a spectre so easily interacted with the world of the living.

“I don’t know.” She replied somberly. “I’m trapped here, that much I know, though I’m told I can leave if I find a suitable replacement for myself and the others.” Severa felt a twinge of nervousness by Lia smiled to allay her concerns. “Don’t worry, this is no trick. I have no plans to leave anytime soon.”

“I suppose asking when we are is a foolish question.” Severa pondered.

“It’s not a relevant question, though I would not say it is foolish.” Lia replied. “This place as it exists now, it doesn’t have a place in the timeline, not anymore. If you know the right door, you can exit where you choose. For all the efforts of those in the epoch era, time travel is hardly a lost art. It’s merely become much better hidden to those that would seek it deliberately.”

Severa turned her line of questioning to another comment Lia had just made.

“You mentioned others?”

“Yes.” Lia replied. “This place is too large now for just one watcher. There is a place where the minds of the telepathic get to rest in death, and Sirius has bridged that place to this one.”

“Hello Severa. It's nice to finally meet you.” a male voice this time, another one Severa recognized.

Summary: Severa chats with future Lia some more about the strange reality they are in.

“Bernard I’ve done it.” Sirius gleamed with pride. For years he had been attempting to accomplish one of his most important tasks. Taking the universe he had contained with the lunar notebook, and carving out a place for it outside space and time. It would be its own world, able to seamlessly link to others, both living and dead.

(“Shall I attempt to contact Ithan?”) Bernard asked.

“Yes, tell him that he may yet reunite properly with his sister.”

(“I believe he already feels he has.”) Sirius listened to Bernard’s reply and glanced at a nearby monitor that showed a representation of the ‘telepathic graveyard’ that Ithan, Efran, and Jeskai’s minds had gone to. It was a series of lines moving about, showing their attempts to contact others in the psychic network, both living and dead. Lia was unresponsive to them all.

“I’m not so sure.”

Summary: Sirius is building a bridge between the little pocket universe his library exists in, and the psychic ‘graveyard universe’ that Ithan, Jeskai, and Efran are in.

Lia had slowed down on the drinks in the hopes it would ease up the voices, but they had only grown stronger. Now they were claiming to be the voices of Zoras she knew to be long dead, Efran and Jeskai. She heard a third voice but refused to acknowledge it to be real.

(“Lia, I know this is hard to accept, but it’s really me. I didn’t want to reach out to you directly but Jeskai and Efran tell me you aren’t replying. Please, this is important, I-”) Lia threw caution to the wind and downed three more shots. The world started to get hazy, and between each blink of the eyes, she started seeing purple clouds and what seemed to be a tree on a hill. It was a place she had seen before, at her mother's funeral. She’d heard voices then too, but only those of a woman saying goodbye to her daughter for the last time. It was supposed to be a one way trip with only parting words permitted between the living and the dead. The alcohol was trying to trick her, convince her there was a way across the void.

(“You’re dead, brother.”) She thought back, fearing the repercussions of accepting the new reality knocking at her door. She heard a strangled shout in response, something Ithan had always done when frustrated with her stubbornness.

(“Sirius found a way across. The beginnings of one. In time we could cross it fully. For now we can still at least talk to one another, we can-”)

(“You aren’t real!”) Lia let out a psychic scream and slammed the doors of her mind shut, blocking out the communications of her fake dead brother.

Summary: Ithan’s soul is basically trapped in the psychic graveyard, but thanks to work from Sirius he and the Zoras Jeskai and Efran can communicate across it to Lia. Eventually they might even be able to pass their souls across it, but Lia is refusing to accept any of it, and continues drinking.

The people of the world looked up in horror and shock. All their efforts would be in vain. Those of good and evil equally thwarted by an unstoppable force. Like a giant hand descending from the heavens to squash a bug, a boulder covered in flames now came down upon them. It was a swift death, engulfing the world in fire and ending all life in a mere instant.

Sirius - Fulmaren Laboratory - Day 3

("Sirius, I think you ended that one a bit prematurely.") Bernard looked on as Sirius crushed rocks against a large table, akin to a toddler having a tantrum with his toys.

"Yeah, maybe."

Summary: Sirius destroys a fake version of our world. YOU PEOPLE NEED TO POST.

"And you, for reasons unknown, seem to think you require my permission or blessing to reclaim this title you hold so dearly? Are you incapable of acting of your own accord, perhaps? You swap from side to side in this conflict, seeking someone, anyone, to give your orders and justify your actions?"

His wand waved, dismissively. "Go. If you must rationalize your actions, then, by all means, tell yourself that I sent you. I'll not begrudge you any chaos sewn among the Hylians in this final battle, though all it will do is hasten their inevitable fall."

His eyes narrowed to a glare. "But should you turn arms against my men once more, I will take it as a personal offense."

Summary: Grem goads Isaac and tells him to go do what he appears to want to do anyway. But don't hurt no more Twili or there will be hell to pay.

"Go. If you must rationalize your actions, then, by all means, tell yourself that I sent you. I'll not begrudge you any chaos sewn among the Hylians in this final battle, though all it will do is hasten their inevitable fall." The warlord's eyes narrowed to a glare. "But should you turn arms against my men once more, I will take it as a personal offense."

The rebuke elicited from Isaac a bemused chuckle.

"Not so fast, you overgrown Iron Knuckle," he shot back. "Acting on my own accord is what brought me here. I'm looking to do you a favor, so how about a little gratitude?

"I'm here now because the target we're speaking of will not be easy to reach, and before we even broach that issue there's the matter of where to find him. I had hoped to ascertain his whereabouts while I was among the Hylian forces, but it proved a more tightly guarded secret than I'd suspected. Now I have some ideas--leads on where to begin--but I'm going to need to get my hands on your intelligence officers in order to make it work."

Isaac turned away from the armored titan, moving off to the side of the tent to a small standing table atop which a single flickering candle burned despite the time of day. He passed his hand over the wavering spark, letting it lick against his palm.

"And just a bit of unsolicited advice? I would caution you not to underestimate the Hylians, and the Light Warriors in particular." He took his hand away from the candle and the flame came with it. As he turned back to face Grem, he closed his fist to smother it. "They may be a chaotic mess, pieces from separate puzzles thrown together by necessity and little else, prone to flying apart at an inopportune moment, but they have a tendency to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. You face two Scions and a host of warriors, many of whom have done this sort of thing before. There's no doubting that you're more powerful than they are, but there's always a way. I'd just hate to see your hubris prove your undoing in this war. It would be... tragic."

Summary: Isaac continues to hassle Grem because it's fun. He's got a plan in mind, as well as a word of caution based on past experience.

Sirius was old now. Older than he ever expected to get, just three years shy of 1700 years old. Of course he was always destined for long life thanks to his somewhat unpleasant origins, and the additional tampering of the sand witch, Rhunerys.

Sirius reflected back on a time when he wasn’t always isolating himself in his lab. Centuries ago, before he had given up on trying to integrate with society. Now he just watched it, occasionally visiting it only when necessary. Now his primary contact was a Zora soul that he refused to allow to pass on to an afterlife. Bernard had been a prisoner so long, and it was only Sirius’ tampering and machinery that kept Bernard from realizing that truth. Bernard thought he couldn’t leave because his soul was bound to Sirius, but the reality is Sirius had the ability to release Bernard at any time.

It was becoming more and more difficult to get Bernard to cooperate, with his already displayed unnerving murderous intent only hours earlier, and not the sarcastic quippy sort. So Sirius’ latest experiment would solve that problem. This time, he would experiment...by doing the right thing.

Sirius operated a small control console, which from he had opened a gateway to the dimension where psychic souls went, a place that Sirius called the telepath graveyard. Bernard wasn’t originally a psychic being, but numerous meddling by Sirius had linked Bernard’s soul to the same web of energy that the Kondoru clan and Chiaria’s used.

(“Sirius, what’s happening?”) Bernard asked, detecting what Sirius had done. Bernard was typically invisible and intangible when in the lab, but had appeared in a ghostly form for the moment.

“Bernard, I’ve activated a device that will open a path to the telepath graveyard. Go.”

“Goodbye.” Sirius wasn’t risking Bernard reintegrating with the lab systems, and activated the next system in his plan. A wall of rippling curtain-shaped purple energy passed through Bernard, teleporting his spirit away immediately. The wall vanished, and Sirius dropped his head as the deed was done. The non-sentient automatic systems kicked on to fill Bernard’s role. And Sirius learned at that moment, that Bernard had already expected this, and already gotten his revenge.

[WARNING: CRITICAL FAILURE ON PRISON GATE #1]

Alarms were buzzing. Sirius tensed up as he didn’t have to dig up any memories to know what Prison Gate #1 was. The only thing stopping the demonic Ma Ratnis from entering the world. Bernard had somehow rigged the gate to shut off when he was released.

[WARNING: SYSTEM ACCESS DISABLED]

That command had not existed before. Bernard had added new commands and automated them. Sirius wouldn’t be able to access his own lab anymore, but he still had a few items that Bernard couldn’t have tampered with. He readied his lunar whip and lunar notebook. He opened the book to the last few pages and tapped on them quickly. The book shook and jumped around on its own, then with a single loud pop it took on a rocky texture, having become a smooth slate.

“Well that works.” Sirius ran his hand across the slate, and it lit up with various symbols. He raised his hand up and the symbols moved into the air in front of him, spreading out on their own leaving energy trails behind. Each one drew patterns in the air, combining to form a single raised column with one button on it. “Clever of you Bernard, but I didn’t tell you every secret of this lab.” Sirius pushed the button, and the alarms stopped. The lights all turned off, and the low level hum normally heard in the lab ceased, as every power source had been shut off.

“5 minutes.” Sirius said aloud, starting the countdown to when the power would turn back on. Ratnis would already be in by then, and not just a fragment looking for a body to inhabit, but the whole demon. Sirius would have to use every emergency measure he had.

“No, Sirius. Your time is up.” The voice was filled with echo and snakelike, coming out like something of a nightmare. Ratnis was already here.

Summary: Bernard takes revenge on Sirius for keeping his soul prisoner in the lab as its central computer. Bernard has passed on to the afterlife, but not before bringing Ratnis into the world at full power.

Lia, HK, Day 3

Lia heard shouting, but could not discern if it was in her head or nearby. She realized that she had to get control over the alcohol, and her training kicked in.Just as telepaths had increased resistance to alcohol, they also possessed the ability to correct the drunkenness, overpowering it. Of course, she only believed this when drunk, and had always argued vehemently about it with Ithan, who insisted it wasn’t a real thing and that Lia had only made it up as a drunken claim.

She swayed around the bar, hearing a voice yelling in her direction. But she also thought that maybe the voice was actually yelling at the thing outside. But then again she also thought maybe it was from the drinking and there were no voices.

(“LIA!”) That one came through. Her dead brother. Still trying to contact her from the dead.

(“I’m not talking to you.”) Lia replied, now convinced it was her mind playing tricks on itself.

(“I’m dead, Lia. But you aren’t. Our friends need your help. They need you to open the way to the desert.”)

Lia fell to the ground and then waved off those that came in to help. (“And how do you know about what they need.”) Lia replied to the voice of her dead brother. She raised a hand and sent a telepathic blast at the monster she saw racing towards herself. In reality it was a stationary chair, that was now in a dozen pieces on the floor from the blast.

(“We still have a telepathic link. You’ve kept yours open to me since I-since I died. I only recently realized I could reach you.”)

(“I don’t believe you, and I don’t need fake ghosts of you telling me what to do. I’m opening a door because I want to.”) Even Lia’s thoughts seemed to have a drunken slur to them. With unnecessary and wild waving of her hands, she created a doorway that was tuned only to those volunteered to go on the desert mission. Any other attempting to pass through would be rejected.

“Here’s your desert door!” Lia attempted to bow, and somehow from the force of the upswing upon returning from the bow, flung herself backwards through the doorway and into the desert. She got a faceful of sand, stood up, looked back, gave a thumbs up and began wandering off through the desert in no particular direction. “Door will stay open for as long as you need it.” She hollered back, defiantly defying nobody but herself as she stomped off across the sands.

Summary: Lia got wasted, opened the portal to the desert, and walked off through it. The portal is configured only to work for those that were signed up for the desert mission.

The winds slowly died down around the forgotten camp, letting the tattered banners droop from their masts and Ganondorf’s crimson cape sink to the cusp of his boots. They were sandy and worn now, after months of laying his plans in his homeland, where they had been clean and black as soot the day Mirra returned them to him. As the dust settled around the collapsed watchtower that held her down, he listened closely for signs of life.

“Come out and face me, settler!” Ganondorf called, hoisting his broadsword in the air. “Face the fate of all those who would challenge the Gerudo nation!”

Suddenly, a shattered pylon budged from the wreckage, and Mirra Lemeris stood upright amid the debris. Her pale face was smudged with ash and a small stream of dried blood. She lowered her eyes at Ganondorf, and her poised glare ran white with a refined and harnessed rage.

“You mistake me for thy enemy, Prince,” she said in a bare hush. “Would you bother to learn your adversary’s origins before you strike, thou may spare thyself the battle.”

Ganondorf hunkered down on his heels and squinted across the hot sands. “You delude yourself if you expect I shall lower my guard at the word of a blue-blooded Hylian,” he shouted.

“Nay, you mistake me again—I am no loyalist of the King’s,” Mirra chided. “I serve a higher power still.” The winds seemed to rise again, and dust began to swirl around them both. The smoke from the wreckage bombed by Ganon’s pig sent hot ash and smoldering cinders in the air over their heads. “Though Hyliaborn I may have been, my destiny lay in the Sacred Realm, a servant to the gods,” she stated, bringing her hand to the hilt of the sword at her side, “not to men.”

Mirra unsheathed her sword and wielded it directly, in a dueling fashion, to challenge Ganon formally. “Now then, you have offended the laws of the Seven by summoning ancestors through time to wage your petty war,” she intoned. “The dead shall not retread the roads of time to turn Princes into Kings. And should you persist in thou endeavor for the Spiritual Stones, you shall face trial for these mad sins when you breach the Sacred Realm.”

Ganondorf gawked at the aura of radiance that suddenly befell the woman’s armor, her very skin seeming to glow with a gold light. “Your gods’ trials…do not intimidate me,” he growled. He clenched both hands around the hilt of his broadsword and prepared to lunge at Mirra. “I will seize the Spiritual Stones for the races of men, and with them, the power to make the Gerudo nation sovereign over the world!”

“But consider, Prince,” she went on, “I serve a higher purpose in this era than bringing one heretic such as yourself to justice. If you would be king of more than thieves, but spare me this feud, and you will have an ally in the Sacred Realm when the time comes to face your destiny. I care little who wields the scepter of earthly power over this waste, but serve me in this world and I shall be in your debt in the next.”

Now Mirra lowered her blade to one side, and extended her other hand with the palm up and open. Prince Ganon, ever cunning, stopped to consider her offer.

“But what could a mortal such as myself possibly offer to a goddess?” he probed, sword still raised.

“Nor am I goddess,” she corrected. “I am but a servant of the Trinity, mortal yet, and my duty bids me traverse your Haunted Wasteland,” she gestured toward the unforgiving dunes that loomed around them like embalmed corpses in their arid mounds, their ghosts whispering on the winds along the shifting ridgelines, “I am all but but a prisoner myself in these lands without a worthy mount. Grant me your assistance in my hour of need, and you have my word as an emissary to vouchsafe your passage when you enter my Realm. By the Goddesses, I am sworn to uphold such a bond.”

Ganondorf paused, finally letting his blade fall to his lower guard. “But whither the warbird you rode into battle when first we crossed paths?” he asked, still wary.

Mirra grew wistful at this, and averted her eyes from the Prince. “Even to an emissary of the gods, some things remain hidden,” she admitted. “Nor do I know why the Goddesses returned me to these impenetrable sands without him. And so, as I provided you with the means to walk out of prison so few moons ago, so too do I call upon thy favor now.”

“So be it,” he said after a long silence, “you shall take the reins of Hathor, and in return I shall call upon thee in my hour of need some fateful day hence. For safe passage in your realm, I grant thee safe passage in mine.”

Ganondorf extended his sword upward once again, and Mirra met the edge of his blade with her own. “Thus an oath is formed, on our deaths be it broken,” she said, as they both brought their fists to their chest and solemnly nodded.

Ganondorf stepped back from the debris and clasped his broadsword to his back. He clapped his hands once, and the armored bulbo Hathor came roaring over the hills in a plume of fire. She stopped at Mirra’s side, and Ganondorf took her leather reins in his hand, and presented them to Mirra. She accepted them, and bowed her head slightly to the man before her.

“Let this be the dawn of a steady alliance,” she said to him, then mounted the great boar. “Until we meet again, Prince.”

With Ganon standing in the wreckage of the Twili encampment, watching her departure in the simmering noonday sun, Mirra continued her trek over the desert sands with newfound speed. Roc circled overhead and began to scout their next destination.

OOC: Forced to negotiate for safe passage through the Haunted Wasteland, Mirra offers Ganon a word in his favor at the Sacred Realm in return for his armored, firebreathing bulbo named Hathor (formerly Rykos’s). She is now on the move in the Desert Province, near the abandoned Twili fort, with a large grayish white falcon flying out ahead.

Simeon caught his breath as he ducked for cover. Taking a moment to ascertain the situation he watched as the carnage unfolded around him. He and his forces had been caught with their pants down. Worse still Simeon knew the identity of his assistants. He reconized the assassin Taden killed as a Twili soilder of Lieutenant Kenata's battalion. Somehow his entire force had appeared to defect to the enemy.

As his men fought against former friends Simeon's memory turned back to a time when the Twili Kingdom was not so united. It turned back to the war filled years of his early childhood, a time he spent most of his adult life trying to redeem for. Simeon secretly prayed that these people were merely seduced into defecting to the Hylian cause. For if it was them...

"No, they won't live to tell about it" Simeon mumbled under his breath. "These people are traitors" he suddenly shouted out to any allies who could hear him. "They deserve no mercy. Kill them all!"

"Their commander is on the ridgeline! Mount your horses and attack to the west!"

As Taden conjoined up his ice storm Count Ryssdal barked out orders and called out formations. Yet as men mounted on their horses Simeon declined to join in the cavalry. Instead he ran off to the west armed with nothing but his Rod of Light. "Wait for my command then attack from the sides. I'll deal with the center."

Charging alone onto the plains the former Baron starred down an enemy formation of horsemen a hundred strong, all galloping full speed towards him. Simeon came to a stop and held still. Then he watched as Taden's ice storm rained down upon them. Chunks of razor sharp icicles fell down like arrows, smashing the horsemen and causing panic. Yet their charge did not relent as the survivors carried on and readied their lances. In response Simon fired out a white hot laser from his staff.

Resembling that of a beamos, but far more powerful, Simeon slowly swept the mile long beam from left to right. One by one the horsemen hit by the searing energy were sawed apart. A mass of limbs both human and horse plopped to the ground, strangely bloodless thanks to the heat cauterizing their wounds. With half their forces finished of Simeon signaled for his troops to counterattack. Whatever hopes the enemy had of victory was now gone.

Now it was time to go after the commander. His staff radiating with glowing heat, cutting down the few remaining in his path like stalks of bamboo. It was then he saw the traitor Lieutenant Kenata. Charging up his remaining solar energy Simeon fired a swordbeam blast expecting a clean kill. To his surprise Kenata blocked the shot with a mirror shield, deflecting the beam back at him. Ducking backwards Simeon narrowly avoided being decapitated by his own laser.

Kenata then tried to ram him on horseback, only for the count to cut down his steed. While the lieutenant attempted to get up Simeon formed a small spearhead of shadow on the end of his rod, ramming it into his heart. Yet while Kenata winced with pain his magically infused armor absorbed most of the energy. Simeon's shield splintered into pieces as Kenata counterattacked with his own sword.

Cleary he had this fight planned out ahead of time. Simeon Ryssdal attempted to gather up whatever light he could, to which the Twili turncoat threw an exploding deku nut. The area surrounding the two filled up with black smoke, turning their duel as black as midnight. With no power left Simeon's rod of light lost is characteristic glow. Defenseless the count could only try and protect himself with nothing more than a useless stick.

"Not so powerful without your magic now are you" gloated Lieutenant Kenata. "Tell me where Grem is and we might let you surrender".

"Grem sends his greatings, but he's a tad busy to deal with traitorous worms like you! Tell me, why did you side with the Hylian's?"

"Simeon, the Hyrulean's are the gods chosen master race! Your friends are burning in hell for daring to defy them" shouted Kenata with much bombast. "The Twili species has proven itself unredeemable in the eyes of the goddesses. Our only hope of salvation is to ensure the complete destruction of our civilization, so a more holy race can replace us!"

"Ha, your a bigot to your own kind" scoffed Simeon. "So the Twili resistance army must have brainwashed you with their pathetic propaganda eh?"

"Your one to talk you spineless pretender. Do you think the people of Kheyja forgive you after what you did? You've spent all this time trying to burry your sins that you've forgotten what you were born as. Well I haven't! After I finish you, I'm going to take a huge steaming dump all over that legacy you've built for yourself. Your wife and friends are all going to find out how little loyalty you actually had for the causes they think you embody."

With these final words Lieutenant Kenata readied his blade and swung forward with a jump attack. Predicting his moves Count Ryssdal blocked with his rod, pushing the attack back.

"You know too much" said Simeon in cold anger. "I'm going to order my men to kill all the prisoners. No one will live to tell them anything. I'll enjoy that bloodshed much more then the last time I destroyed the resistance army."

"You think thay actually give a shit about you" replied Kenata as he narrowly missed Simeon's chin. "Lord Grem himself ordered this armor constructed as a backup if he ever decided his was done with his pawn. I stole his plans to kill you. Chew on that while your in hell!"

Simeon weaved to the side but grunted as Kenata's sword caught the edge of his chainmail. "Grem is smart. He always has a contingency plan. Here's mine". From out behind him came Taden, Ax drawn ready for battle. "Horwendil, kill him!"

Summary: Simeon discoveres the people attacking them are a former Twili batallion lead by Lieutenant Kenata. Simeon and Taden fight them of before Simeon duels the commander. Simeon runs out of light magic to fight Lieutenant Kenata, and instead leaves Taden to finish him off.

Sorry this took so long. Hope everyone is having fun playing Breath of the Wild!

Davus felt something odd in his mind, the voice of the Chiaria’s briefly, and then visions of a portal in the hidden village. A portal directly to the desert, but one that didn’t seem like it could be intended for him. Why would Lia be sending messages to him? Even with his newfound alliance with Sirius, it wasn’t likely that Lia would ever cooperate with Davus.

Nevertheless, it sparked his curiosity, and he dispersed his body into elemental form, slipping through the portal as nothing more than a puff of smoke, appearing on the other side in physical form. There was no return portal, and what appeared to be the footsteps of a drunk, wandering off into the desert.

Davus briefly searched for the once plentiful hate inside himself, momentarily longing for a time when life was as simple as kill and destroy. But he found only doubt, and with a disgusted sigh, began to pursue Lia, to help her. Oh how his life had changed.

Summary: Davus stealthily follows Lia into the desert, revealing that Lia accidentally opened the portal to literally any being within the village radius. Oops.

Doused repeatedly in plague slime and various gases, Aris remained unaffected by mundane ailments. He could feel the ground turn to dust where he stepped, and the stench bothered him, but otherwise he held fast. The golem went wherever he wanted it to go, and the continued smiting prayers kept its hateful gaze upon the Celestial Defender.

Projecting his voice, Aris sounded another alarm.

"Hylian forces, our camp is under attack! Any available forces, form up on me and take this abomination down!"

Exorcising prayers had no effect. These principalities were legion and they were laying waste with every step. To delay it further, Aris held his crystalline claymore aloft and began to emit strobe flashes, pulsing them right at its head. This dazed it briefly, but its arms and legs started to divest their armored contents, pouring out all sorts of undead minions onto the ground. Stalchildren, redeads, average height flesh golem bipeds, and crawlers with warped flesh and serrated tentacles.

"Triune, stand with me!"

The golem drove its sword into the ground and took a knee, and tentacles sprouted from the base of its "wrist," embedding into the ground along side it, pumping toxins into the soil. Its full attention was on spreading pestilence while the minions all converged on Aris.

Radiating with holy light, the Celestial began to cleave his way through the horde. Some incinerated when they got too close to him, and others were catching fire as he cut them down. He shouted others apart with Hymns of the Sacred Realm, roaring praises of the Triune in glorious battle.

The songs attracted further attention as archers began to rain down their quivers upon the golem. Hylian mages threw as much fire as they could at it, and it flashed ablaze.

"Disable its knees and feet! If we can contain it, we can save the camp's food and water!"

It had to run out of toxins at some point. But the hordes kept pouring out of its arms and legs and torso. How did they all fit in the cavity? Perhaps that was a secret best left alone...

Summary: Aris attempts to keep the Flesh Golem threat contained, but it was a trojan horse full of wretched undead monstrosities. He needs some help, badly.

The sound of breaking glass echoed from all directions as Kae reached her mind out to the cobwebs above. As the thoughts began to take shape all along the walls around her, she saw a foul tome dripping with blood land at her feet with a sickening thud.

She could hear heavy breathing alongside that glass, along with palpable, cloying rage. Everything had a crimson tinge to it...and when she reached down for the book, it sent a surge through her Celestial arm, knocking her back. There were childish giggles echoing now, and she saw a figure on the walls, its back to her, while the small girl the Treant was holding did combat with it. The figure was a woman with long red hair bright as a bonfire and whipped about by the wind. Her armor was as black as midnight with gilded trim, and she wore a red cape with a bloody crescent moon embroidered on it. And she was holding the Starborn Edge along with some other ebony blade...how did her sword exist so long ago when it was forged in the energies of a supernova?

Kae could never get a look at the woman's face. But over and over again, she lost to the little grass girl in ways more gruesome than the next. Decapitations, disembowelments and strangling with the entrails, incinerations from some sort of infernal amulet, bisections, turning to giblets with pummeling blows, and one in particular where the woman's head was beyond beaten to a pulp with that book. It was pretty twisted stuff, and things just did not feel right. This little girl had nothing but pure hatred for the fire-headed warrior.

"To have nothing but these thoughts for so many years, centuries, more...show me the truth. Why do you carry this hate with you? Is this what has kept your inner fire burning?"

She could feel the apples in her stomach churning, and did everything she could to keep from throwing up, steeling her stomach. The odor of freshly turned earth and buried dead filled her sinuses, making it harder to focus. So many thoughts flooding her head. Maybe she made a mistake coming in here, but she couldn't see the Silver Cord tethering her spirit to the mindscape.

The old man meant to burn him from the inside out, soul first. Panic gripped at him, thrashing violently Polaris was overcome with its radiance until slowly, finally a cool calm washed over him and he began to embrace this scourging of his very being.

When it was all over, Polaris rose shakily to his feet, ears ringing he looked upon the aged wanderer in a new light.

"I have done what I could to free you of the Dusk. Your thoughts should be clear now, but the rest is up to you." He could see a fading outline of fingers still glowing, growing dim with each passing moment, upon the sides of the Zora's face, flanking his dark eyes. Hands of light. A sign. "You will face the horrors now with clear eyes, and you may find that it is difficult to accept. You will never be the Polaris that you were before; that age of innocence is past. But for those such as us, purpose can keep us standing. I have been the Right Hand of Order for a thousand years, and that obsession has kept me going. You have it in you, I think, to be its Left Hand.

"If that is what you choose."

Face still tingling with the impressions left by Chamdars hands, the ringing subsided and Polaris laughed aloud. A clear, ringing laughter. Hearty and whole. No traces of the madness that once plagued him. It was just him now.

”Clear eyes… my vision is clearer than even you may realize friend.” Shakily, the General passed a hand in front of his face, the visage wavered and emblazoned over one of his own, the Weeping Eye of the Sheikah Chieftain appeared. ”You’ll find that when in my right senses, my vision is exceptionally clear.”

Nodding to himself in some silent deliberation, Chamdar extended a hand. “So then, I take it that you accept?”

Clasping the offered hand, Polaris ginned, ”I do.”

That radiant light shone once more, briefly, and settled upon the two. When it lifted, scales once crimson were now streaked with whites and greys. Looking upon himself, Polaris nodded. ”Thank you.” With one final squeeze Polaris released his grip on the Right Hand and moved past him. ”It’s time I got back. Until next time Wanderer.”

He didn’t look back.

Instead, he moved with the crisp decisiveness of the winter wind, cutting across the landscape in a few short minutes. Thus it was in short order that he found himself standing outside of the tavern where his companions had long awaited his return. Too long he had kept them waiting.

He breathed deeply and pushed his way through the tavern doors, there was nothing to be done about that now, he could only find the energy to worry about the future. He would do better by them all.

Scanning the dimly lit interior, it took him a moment to locate Darrel and Jaden situated at a table in a secluded section of the tiny bar room. A shimmering portal situated close by. Polaris could smell faint traces of the desert and could only surmise that Lia had grown weary of her waiting and went on ahead. He couldn’t blame her.

As he made his way across the bar room, Darrels eyes rose to meet his own, but the General did not engage him. He first went to Jaden, lifted the cup from the front of him and raised it to his lips, pausing, he sniffed, curling his nose he sat it back down with a look of disgust.

”What the hell is that Jaden?

...oh. Yeah.

Stick with the sober thing. I went through hell last time.”

Going to a nearby table, Polaris snagged a tumbler from a confused looking soldier and strolled back over to his friends. ”King Zora’s Barrel Aged Bourbon. That’s more like it.”

Raising a hand to forestall any questions, he sized up the portal and the charred remains of a chair. ”There will be time enough for answers, and don’t worry I will give them all to the best of my abilities. But let us talk whilst we travel eh?”

Draining the last of his stolen drink, Polaris left the tumbler and a sizable amount of rupees with the dumbstruck soldier he’d stolen it from and patted him across the back before stepping through the shimmering portal into the scorching desert sun.

Summary:

Polaris (and Robb) get there shit together and make a post. After his session with Chamdar, Polaris meets up with Darrel and Jaden, steals a drink and then overpays for it before hopping through the portal.

When Taden saw Ryssdal’s solar staff lay waste to the Twili on the battlefield, he recognized a threat; when he saw Lieutenant Kenata’s armor absorb the staff’s blows, he saw an opportunity.

While the battle raged on below, Taden tore across the ridgeline towards Simeon and Kenata on horseback, his speed pressed by the frigid wind at his back. He had seized a horse during the fray, and rode headlong towards the rebel lieutenant from his southern flank when he noticed Ryssdal confronting him alone. They traded blows in bright flashes of Dusk and Light, until he could barely discern where either stood, as if all their motions through time were visible in a continuous blur. From within this miasma, Taden heard Ryssdal call out, though he couldn’t be sure where he stood, or when.

“Horwendil, kill him!”

Kenata braced himself with his shoulder shoved into a heavy shield, but Taden twisted wide of the collision and swiped his unsheathed Aurgelmir blade through the air: a wave of Blue Fire ripped across the ground and knocked Kenata back on his heels, locking his legs and one arm to the earth in columns of ice.

Two bodyguards leapt onto their horses and gave chase, but Taden circled back and sent two streams of Blue Fire flying towards them in a cross, knocking one from his horse and sending the other bucking towards the cliffs. He rode between them, and whipped one more wave of the dark magick into the fleeing horse’s rear, sending him and his rider over the cliff’s edge.

He rounded on the other, and before he could scramble for his horse, Taden sped his mount towards them and sliced the blade of his longsword into the horse’s flank, nearly crushing the guard in the process.

As the wounded horse bolted off, he dismounted his steed and approached the guard with knife drawn. Aurgelmir was sheathed back at his side; for this cretin, he would use the Maskmaker’s Knife. The last of the rebel commander’s guards lunged at him with a sinister, jagged sword, and Taden leaned back quickly, luring the brute off his balance. Without fanfare, he flicked the curved knife across the side of the Twili’s neck, along the narrow slit of his right ear, then brought the blade in and up to stab his stomach.

As he slumped to the ground, Taden turned to find Ryssdal kneeling a few yards from where Kenata still stood, frozen in place, now cornered and unguarded. Taden approached the commander with knife drawn. He came face to face with Lieutenant Kenata, leering into his yellowish, almond eyes. With his free hand, Taden formed a tightly clenched fist, and the layers of ice entombing the Twili began crawling up his torso and limbs.

Simeon looked down at the paralyzed traitor with disdain. Kenata struggled to turn his head and meet his former comrade’s eye. Ryssdal paused for a moment, as if to consider sparing his life.

“His body is yours, treasure hunter.” Simeon turned away from Taden and looked out over the waste below. He raised his arms to the stormdark sky and reveled in the clang of steel and mail. “The day is mine.”

His men were routing the enemy and converging on their fortress’s main gate. The rebels had been slaughtered to a man. While the Captain looked on, Taden slid the fine edge of his knife across Kenata’s pale blue neck. He unhinged the dark breastplate from his chest and shoulders before the black Twili blood reached it, and swiftly strapped the armor over his upper body.

OOC: Taden finishes off Kenata and his goons for Simeon, and claims his Dusk-enchanted breastplate as a trophy.

“Hello Severa.” Bernard Kotaro stood before Severa. He was definitely not alive. Unlike Lia where it felt vague, Bernard was partially translucent, hovering inches off the floor, and had a distinct distant echo to his voice, like he was speaking across the void. For as long as Severa had known, Bernard had been bound to the lunar notebook, then briefly injected into a cloned body, and then finally integrated with the lab itself as the core processing system. Sirius had backups but preferred Bernard for his unmistakable unique qualities, namely being a spirit and not just programming.

Severa understood this place to be the natural extension of the library, but it was more than that. It was like a graveyard.

“Sirius found a way to steal a single moment in time, and I convinced him to give Bernard a life again.” Severa parroted Lia’s words from mere moments before. “So what you are saying is, Sirius gave Bernard a life to live in, and then his soul just ended up here anyway when he died naturally?” Both Bernard and Lia gave a silence that seemingly confirmed Severa’s guess. “What IS this place?” Severa repeated her earlier question. She was inpatient now, she needed answers.

Lia remained calm in the face of Severa’s rising anger. “It's as I said, no deceptions. This is a gateway to the realm where psychic minds rest. Bernard as you see him now is merely a projection into the gateway. His true spirit still resides there, along with my family and countless others. My fate is to be here because I am neither dead nor alive.”

“Severa. Your role in the world is to help stop your father.” Bernard said, his voice beginning to grow distant as his body began to grow dim, fading out of the world. “And until you have to stop him, you have to help his cause. To save all worlds. Go back to his world, and help them fight a great battle.”

Summary: Severa chats with some folks in the alternate reality. Nothing of consequence here.

The sun hung interminably high in the arid blue sky, as if this day of her return to the realm would never pass into night. Pausing for a moment on her razorback mount, Mirra unclasped a canteen and sipped lukewarm water down her parched throat.

“There’s got to be a reason the goddesses sent me back here,” Mirra lamented, puzzling over the dazzling dunes on the horizon that seemed to drift off without end.

Suddenly, the white spot of her falcon Roc against the blue haze dove low and swooped back into the air over a steep rise in the sands. He circled there steadily, drawing Mirra closer.

“Hello?” she called out as she reached the dune’s ridge. Far below her, at the bottom of a steep grade in the sands, a lone woman lay facedown in dirt-stained robes half-buried in sand. “Hoy!” Mirra tried to rouse her, and noticed the woman curl her shoulders slightly, as if trying to push up.

“Wait there!”

Mirra hopped down from Hathor and skidded down the sandy slopes, shifting her feet and swerving her knees and hips as she descended. When she reached the bottom of the low pit this woman had fallen in, Roc met her shoulder and snapped lightly at the air.

She knelt down by the girl’s side and pulled the ivory gloves from her wrists. She touched her hand to the side of the girl’s face, and pushed thin strands of short-cropped brunette hair from her brow. Her eyes looked up at Mirra blankly, with what seemed like the vague shadow of pupils searching blindly over the vault. The girl's sweat seemed to reek of distilled mash, and yet something darker seemed to linger beneath the surface.

The girl mumbled to herself, as if she were conversing with another, but in tones too low for Mirra to hear even up close. Her eyes faded from focused, dark irises to mirky white pools that stared in no direction. Wherever she was, Mirra knew she was fargone.

“Nayru, guide this lost sheep back to waking life, and pour water o’er her cracked lips from the sieve of your Wisdom,” she intoned.

A white light glistened from the edges of Mirra’s palms, and she slowly cupped the young woman’s face in her hands. Gradually, her vision seemed to clear, and with a gasp she quickly sat up and gawked at Mirra. She wiped sand from her eyes. Mirra passed her her canteen, and the girl gulped the warm water greedily.

“I am Mirra Lemeris, a healer from the Sacred Realm,” she introduced herself. “Are you hurt? How did you come to be here?”

OOC: Mirra finds a nearly fainted Lia at the bottom of a sand pit and casts a quick healing spell on her to wake her up.

“I am Mirra Lemeris, a healer from the Sacred Realm,” she introduced herself. “Are you hurt? How did you come to be here?”

Lia didn’t have any magical ability to ward off alcohol's effects. But they did naturally wear off faster due to some kind biological difference. So the time she had spent in the desert combined with the healing spell gave her a clear head again. Clearer than before, at least.

But she couldn’t quite summon the strength to speak, instead sending a small telepathic ‘thank you’ to this woman. Out of respect for having likely saved her life, Lia opted not to intrusively scan the woman’s mind for a name. Lia then telepathically transmitted the moments leading up to this one to her savior. Thoughts she sent included mourning her brother, drinking at the bar, and coming to the desert in a drunken haze before passing out.

Before long, Lia found the will to speak and not merely send thoughts.

“Lia.” She coughed and took another drink of water. “Came here with allies, but can’t…” Lia struggled. Her memory was normally solid but the drinking and depression were wreaking havoc on it. She couldn’t remember the names of her allies, and some of them she’d known for many years. “I’m sorry I’m having trouble remembering. There are others coming though, so that we can make the sword.” Lia felt some inner concern. She didn’t know this woman and was freely offering information. Alcohol hadn’t completely worn off. She was coherent now but not still not very wise. “We need to retrace my steps. They will come through the way I did.”

Summary: Lia telepathically thanks Mirra and sends a visual montage of what brought her to the desert. Then she switches to speaking aloud, and somewhat freely reveals that she has “allies coming to fix the sword” since she’s still drunk and not making complete sense.

"You're right about that too. We need to get that mineral and get that sword into someone's hands. Then we have to decide whether we believe the mad ravings of my sister regarding Grem or not. And whatever you need, battle brother. I'd take thousands of foes on alone if you asked."
Darrel sipped his drink. It was amusing in a way, the different trajectories they were on. He had never been one to drink while engaged in a conflict like this, save for the odd sip here and there during quiet moments. Too serious from too young an age, the uncertainty of duty demanding too much from him. Now he found the way forward looked a lot clearer. He wasn't afraid of what was to come. He was resigned to it in some ways. In others he welcomed it. All the time he'd spent fighting with Jaden at his side, a young warrior just entering the prime of his powers, with a confidence and sense of freedom that Darrel had never known as a younger man, seemed to have loosened him up just a bit.

"I don't know all of what your sister was speaking of, but I know what I felt when I faced him. We need to find a new way to wage this war against him or it'll all be lost."
He drained the last of his glass in one long sip as Polaris reappeared from the street, striding confidently. There was a difference in his step though, and the confidence had nothing to do with primal security of men such as they in the strengths they possessed. No, this was self-assuredness of a different sort. And it was not just his bearing. Darrel could read a difference in the way the soul of the man radiated from his core. There had been a darkness in him before that no longer dragged at him, causing his shoulders to sag as though he bore a great weight. He'd embraced a different light.

As the Red Ice General made his way across the bar room, Darrel met his gaze. Polaris, however, did not engage. He first went to Jaden, lifted the cup from where it sat in front of him and raised it to his lips. Pausing, he sniffed, and with a look of disgust he set it back down.

"What the hell is that Jaden?

...oh. Yeah.

Stick with the sober thing. I went through hell last time."

Going to a nearby table, Polaris snagged a tumbler from a confused looking soldier and strolled back over to their table. "King Zora’s Barrel Aged Bourbon. That’s more like it."

Darrel made as though to speak, but Polaris held of a hand to silence the words before they left his tongue. His eyes were surveying the portal, a shimmering puncture-wound in the air, through which the dun earth-tones of the sun baked desert could be glimpsed. Lia had vanished through that portal mere moments before Darrel had entered, and had he not been somewhat used to the exploits of the Chiaria clan by now, it would had left his mouth agape.
There were already more than a few of those as he glanced about.

"There will be time enough for answers, and don’t worry I will give them all to the best of my abilities. But let us talk whilst we travel eh?"

Draining the last of his stolen drink, Polaris left the tumbler and a sizable amount of rupees with the dumbstruck soldier he’d stolen it from and patted him across the back before stepping through the shimmering portal into the scorching desert sun. Still holding his empty glass, Darrel looked across at Jaden, to whom he offered only a bemused grin and a shrug of his shoulders."I suppose he's not wrong. We should be moving."
Darrel slid out from the bench, but before he plunged through the portal and into the harsh climes awaiting on the other side, he went to the bar where the man tending had placed four full waterskins with leather straps per his request. He took them up and slung them crosswise over his shoulders, then returned to the portal.

"Here we go..." he murmured, then with a deep breath of otherwise cool Eldin air, he pressed through.
Instantly he was buffeted by a blast of hot air, pelted with gusts of blown sand. Lifting his right arm to shield his eyes from the harsh sun glaring above, he squinted through the wind to get a sense for their location. It seemed to him in that moment as though he had just left the brutal heat of the desert, and in truth he supposed he really had. Now they were back, and there was work to be done.

Jaden came through the portal on his heels, and Darrel heard a few murmured curses from the young Sentinel as he too shielded his face. Polaris, meanwhile, stood several paces ahead atop a particularly high dune, gazing west across the waste. Darrel stepped up next to him, unslinging a waterskin and holding it out for him to take.

"Always good to be back, eh?" he grumbled as he cast his eyes around their immediate vicinity. "Any sign of Lia? She just came through not long ago--she can't have ventured too far."Or, I suppose, she very well could have.

Polaris nodded absently, but his eyes were fixed on something beyond Darrel's vision.

"I think I see something ahead."Summary: Polaris rejoins the company and the three of them finally depart Hidden Kakariko and head to the desert. Upon arrival, Polaris indicates that he thinks he sees something far ahead.

Darrel was right. There had to be a new way to fight this war...something to break the cycle. Maybe have more husbands who could go home to their wives, men who could see their sweethearts once more, or make this winter not be their last one.

"Just like a cloud o' dust right outta Nayru's nookie. Can't see a bloody thing!"

Following the sound of his companions' voices, he watched his steps as Polaris claimed he saw something. But it wasn't what Polaris saw in Jaden's mind as much as what the Sentinel felt. Was the Chieftain nearby? Someone or something was using one of the most secret Sheikah abilities. And Polaris looked different from what he could see, but the gusts of sand obscured the good look he tried to get.

"We might not be alone here, folks. I felt the Chieftain's presence just now. He might have come through the portal; might not be Lia you see up there. How can you see in this mess, anyway?"

Summary: Jaden doesn't like the desert. His people can be comfortable there for quite some time, but he prefers forested mountains. How the heck can anyone see in this sandstorm? It's da rude thing if no one else can.

His eyes never straying from the distant horizon Polaris nodded distractedly at Darrels words and accepted the proffered waterskin, slinging it across his chest with the attached leather strap, the skin coming to rest at his hip.

"Always good to be back, eh?" he grumbled as he cast his eyes around their immediate vicinity. "Any sign of Lia? She just came through not long ago--she can't have ventured too far."

By virtue of the Chieftains Mark, he could sense Jaden’s approach as clearly as he heard it. And he heard him loud and clear, cursing with much fanfare as he came abreast of the General and Sunrise Knight.

"We might not be alone here, folks. I felt the Chieftain's presence just now. He might have come through the portal; might not be Lia you see up there. How can you see in this mess, anyway?"

Polaris pulled his gaze from the far off dunes and looked the Sheikah Sentinel up and down, gauging his current state and temperament. He would need to do this delicately.

”I have the answer to both your question and the possibility of the Chieftain following us. For starters, only us, Lia, and perhaps one other have traversed the path which she opened. We cannot count your Chieftain among that number.”

Unstoppering the corked skin at his hip, the General waggled an index finger in a circular motion and flicked it upward causing a small portion of the already warm water inside to raise to his lips. With his thirst temporarily quenched, he replaced the cork and raised the same finger into the air to emphasize his meaning, ”As I said, I possess the answer to your query regarding my Sight, but I ask you to belay that particular line for the time being. In the meantime, you are correct, we are NOT alone, I cannot see this other, so be on your guard as we progress.” Turning his attention back to that far off horizon, Polaris could see the vaguely familiar outline of the Chiaria girl and another whose identity he could only guess at, atop a rise behind them a gargantuan bullbo mount loomed.

Crouching down he cupped his hands and scooped up a large amount of sand, and muttered under his breath for a moment until the golden brown substance flashed a bright crimson before writhing into the form of a tightly coiled rope that was somewhere between sandy brown and blood red on the visible spectrum. Standing, Polaris affixed one end about his waist before passing it to Darrel.

Mytura eyed it suspiciously.

”Don’t worry, it isn’t cold. Well, it is actually, but not THAT cold. No harm will come to you from its touch, furthermore, you may find some relief from the harshness of the sun with it about your waist...

And if we find ourselves under attack, I can dissolve it in an instant...

Since I’m the only one who can see where we’re going, I figured it the safest way to navigate this storm...”

Tentatively, Darrel took hold of the rope and Polaris smiled reassuringly.

”There. Now then. This way.”

Motioning for the others to follow, Polaris set off across the dunes intimately aware of just who else it was that had passed through that portal.Summary:

Polaris replies to Jaden and asks him to lay off that first line of questioning, fearing he would melt his brain. Of course, telling Jaden to not ask will only make him ask more insistently. Polaris fears that he knows just who the unnamed individual who used the portal was, but there’s nothing that he can do about it so he doesn’t raise alarm and instead fashions a rope out of sand and red ice so that he doesn’t give his friends freezer burn, but still have the ability to both guide and cool them. Despite Darrel's hesitance, he sets off across the desert towards Lia and Mirra before Darrel and Jaden technically even agree to bind themselves thusly.

He doesn’t exactly recognized this new version of Mirra, but he has a hunch.

Mirra winced and touched her fingertips to her temple, as the wartorn memories haunting Lia’s mind swarmed her own. Memories that were not yet hers flooded her vision, of the decisive lakeside battle and the Hylian exodus, until she realized the continuous flow of time from when she left this plane only moons ago from the very desert where they now stood.

When she opened her eyes, Lia was a blur, seeming to float to and fro over the shifting sands. Mirra began to wonder if she had encountered a mirage.

“You…bring word of the Allies?” she queried, then laughed aloud, wide-eyed, as the truth dawned on her. “The quest for the Daybreak Sword survives?” Mirra rushed up to Lia and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her in close with a gasp. “The Alliance lives?!”

She backed away from Lia and shut her solid plate visor over her face, tilting her gaze upward with arms thrown back. White light glistened in the lines of feathers etched into the opal mask's polished surface.

In the sunscorched haze, her gyrfalcon spun low in a thin white line under the clouds, then soared out over the horizon in the direction Lia had arrived.

With her mask lowered, Mirra took the stranded girl by the hand and began walking her up the slopes of the pit she had fallen into. When she stumbled, Mirra pressed her thumb and forefinger to her lip under her mask and whistled briskly, bringing her Bulbo mount scrambling downhill to meet them. She helped Lia into the saddle, and looped the reins around her hands twice to help her hold on.

“Let us go,” she said, patting Lia’s folded hands before she turned and began leading Hathor up to the ridgeline on foot.

From her bird’s eye view, Miira caught a glimpse of none other than Polaris Eridanus perched atop a distant dune. The Red Ice General’s scarlet scales scintillated in the distance.

“Reunited, at long last…,” Mirra sighed under her breath. "Alleluia."

With her opal mask still lowered, she readied her golden carved longbow and drew back a shimmering Light Arrow. She held the arrow nocked until its inner light grew meteoric, then fired it skyward in a near vertical streak. A pulsating column of light shot into the air, visible from at least as far as Polaris’s vantage, if not the warrior she knew to be at his side.

OOC: Mirra tries to decipher the braindump Lia gave her, and hoists her onto Hathor the Bulbo’s back to help her retrace her steps. Lowering her opal visor over her face, she sees through her falcon Roc’s eyes and observes Polaris looking out from a high dune. She looses a Light Arrow vertically into the air to create a beacon for the party to follow.

"Since I’m the only one who can see where we’re going, I figured it the safest way to navigate this storm...”

Tentatively, Darrel took hold of the rope and Polaris smiled reassuringly. He did not loop it around his own waist, but instead coiled it around the palm of his right hand several times before passing the end of the rope to Jaden. He looked back to Polaris, his... friend, he supposed? His comrade? He gave a short nod and gripped the 'rope' tighter.

"There. Now then. This way."

Polaris began to lead the trio forward through the harsh gusts of sand. Darrel could use Morning's Herald to shield his face from the worst of it. Jaden drew up his veil to do the same. Polaris pressed forward across the dunes, seemingly unbothered.

He's different, Darrel thought to himself as they meandered forth. I remember when ours paths first crossed six months ago... a skilled warrior already, but at that time he had seemed so out of his depth...

---
They did battle before the steps of a hut overlooking a raging river far below. Darrel had been content to stay out of the conflicts that had begun once more to ravage Hyrule, until a young Zora and a wayward golem had happened upon his solitude, followed soon after by this crimson-scaled upstart, a Scion-not-yet-elevated, and an imperious if overmatched Sheikah agent. Weary and short-tempered, Darrel had given the Zora warrior battle, trading mighty blows of spirit and crimson ice until fortune gained him the upper hand.

It was well that the Zora had sensed their their purposes need not be at odds, else they might have destroyed one another.

"Perhaps, it would be a wise decision...Sunright Knight, you say? The name strikes a cord somewhere deep in my memory, but I cannot recall why."

The glacial coverings on the Zora's extremities fell, as crimson water, to the ground. Still clinging tight to the hilt of his argentine dagger, Polaris rose to his feet, warily assuming a combat stance to resume their duel if need be.

"Heh, you know what they say about assumptions...you'll have to forgive both my companions and myself." Audibly chuckling. "One of us, has a tendedncy to get, a bit overzealous I suppose...I have been traveling with them for only a short time now, but I assure you their intentions are of a good nature. My name is Polaris, and I wonder, if there is still a chance at the cooperation you spoke of? Or do we continue the fight until this damned leg gives out and becomes the end of me?"

"To you... Polaris, I will comply. We each stand down, sheath our weapons, and speak as one warrior to another." Darrel said, driving his blade home in its sheath and stepping forward to hold out a firm hand to his adversary. He would take a chance on this Zora's honor. He would accede to hope.

---

Another new Light Warrior for a new age, albeit birthed from an earlier one. Much as Darrel had begun to see Jaden grow in his strength and his confidence, he had seen it too in Polaris. Perhaps in Polaris most of all. Before his departure he had begun to step to the fore, willingly. In his absence, Darrel could still perceive that much had happened about him. To him.

Was this what others had seen in years past, when Darrel had stepped forward? Was this the inexorable march of time, that champions old eventually ceded the vanguard to those who came after? For years it had seemed to Darrel that it could not be so. He did not age, at least not in body, but his heart and his mind grew tired. Polaris and Jaden, they could take up the standard. And Horus. Ayala. Even Senshi, if he let himself. They had a new Scion to light their way.

Perhaps now was the time to handle old business. Once and for all.

In days to come, perhaps, Helen's voice whispered in his mind. He felt a soothing touch, light as a feather, brushing away the deep delve of his thoughts and smiled to himself. Darrel had always been given to brooding, and she had always been given to using her Celestial powers to keep him from it. Even now she remembered. We still have work to do yet. Together.

He let the thoughts fall away, letting himself be guided by Polaris' tug on the rope. Letting himself be lead. Instead he closed his eyes and let his spiritual senses range outward. Here in the desert, the heart of the ancient Gerudo lands, they who were most attuned to his element, he could project further.

Somewhere beyond, he felt a pair of pulses. Spiritual auras radiating in the sands.

He thought he felt another as well, but could not pinpoint it.

"Polaris!" he called out over the winds. "I can sense them through the storm, we're close!"

"I know, I can see them!" his friend replied, calling back. "Look forward; the storm seems to be winding down."

Darrel lowered his shield, finding that only a few stray, strong gusts of sand buffeted his face. Ahead, still opposite several large dunes that had mounded in between, he could see a ray of light shoot up into the air.

He opened his fist, letting the ice-rope fall away, and laughed.

"Well that's a signal if I've ever seen one." Jaden said as he stepped up beside the other two. "That's got to be the psychic, right?"

Darrel didn't wait to hear Polaris' answer. He fueled spirit into his legs to make his strides through the shifting sands easier and launched himself forward. He sensed something peculiar, a presence of spirit that he'd known once before, months earlier, if briefly. He landed hard atop the crest of a dune, smashing down into it so hard that he collapsed its peak. As the explosion of sand began to settle, he broke into a run. Atop the next rise he used his right hand to shield his eyes from the sun and gazed down into the next valley.

There was Lia, mounted atop an enormous bulbo. And beside her, girded in gleaming armor and still holding aloft her bow, stood one whom his eyes had not alighted upon in six long months. But whatever she'd been through, her spirit retained its resonance.

It was a time for returns, it seemed. Of paths intersecting.

"... Mirra Lemeris?" He plunged down the other side of the dune, sliding down its slope until he came to rest at the bottom, then rose to his feet and brushed himself off. "It is you. It seems this desert waste is determined to continue to bring us all together again. It is... good to see you."

He looked back over his shoulders as his companions crested the dune above. He couldn't help but allow a smile to crease his blonde-bearded face. Until, that is, his eyes came to the sagging psychic seated in the bulbo's saddle with reins tied around her to keep her seated. "Is she going to be alright?"

Summary: Darrel has a bit of reflection time as he uses his shield to block the gusts of sand while Polaris leads them through the storm. He's beginning to see a turning point in what has been a very long life to this point, but he's not quite there yet. As the sandstorm dies down Polaris spies Mirra's signal. At that point Darrel decides to take off, able to sense familiar spiritual presences ahead. He greets Mirra as a friend, in a considerably lighter mood than his usual self because the spirit of his wife is using mystical soothing to to keep him from being broody and short-tempered as he has a tendency to be. However, his concern quickly returns when he sees the state that Lia is in.

Ratnis looked not unlike ancient depictions of demise, albeit with purple hair and easily a foot shorter. It was almost adorable, like a mini-demise. But his power was not so cute. Ratnis carried not a sword, but instead his body was covered in thorns, and his hands were his weapons. A single punch would crush most any man.

Luckily, Sirius was not a normal man. He was still pretty much as dead as he had been for days. His corpse was animated by rune tech, and his spirit had long since been separated from it. While he preferred humanoid form, the skill he displayed when possessed by Ratnis was still within him. Sirius still had Garo form, a special twist he added to his skillset shortly before Kokage executed him.

He shifted into the hooded swordsman form, and drew his blades.

“Ratnis, you’re a little early, and I don’t have the place ready for you yet.”

Summary: Sirius still has the ability to become a Garo and is about to use that power in his defense against Ratnis.

Flashback

Lia, Before IWS3

Lia and Ithan looked upon a rolling wave of darkness. Like an ocean made of squid’s ink, the tide was rushing towards them. The past month of their lives had been a roller coaster of time travel, attempting to correct errors made by Sirius and ensure that Polaris Eridanus stayed on the correct path of time. It had been a grueling process and though he hid as best he could, Lia knew it was making Ithan sick. It would have been making them both equally sick but he was somehow drawing the time sickness from her.

Time travel didn’t always cause time sickness, but they had used questionable methods to force time travel, sometimes sending only their minds, sometimes their entire bodies. A mixture of magic and technology, but the end result was that Ithan was dying, and they both knew it.

Lia held hope there was a cure, and Ithan refused to talk about it. At this moment though, they had more pressing matters. The most recent time travel exploits had hurtled them much further into the future than they were supposed to go. So far that it seemed to be beyond the point of certainty, which they recognized as the final point in time where specific historical events seemed absolute. They were solidly in the realm of alternate futures, or so it seemed.

Ithan was exhibiting immense power. With barely any effort, he teleported them away from the wave of darkness just before it came crashing down, bringing them to the skies above, aboard a massive mechanical bird. One no longer piloted by anyone but the automated systems. It was the last stronghold of the time displacement runes, objects stolen by Sirius from another reality.

Sirius. What had he become in this reality? That wave of darkness had become his doing. Lia turned to Ithan.

“The prophecy failed here.” She said solemnly. “Sintar never came to be, and Sirius has fallen beyond our reach.” Ithan didn’t respond, instead focusing on the rune panel he was interacting with.

“It’s ready for us, time to go to our final destination. Hyrule, 2108AD.”

Summary: Flashback to Ithan and Lia’s time travel journey prior to their arrival in IWS3.

Lia / Desert Province / Day 3

Lia heard Darrel’s concerns and lazily opened an eye. “I’m fine, just resting. I’ll be ready when needed.” She shut her eyes and slumped over again, not asleep but only passingly aware of her surroundings. More rest was needed before she could be of use for the return trip to town.

Summary: Lia is awake, but not very functional. She replies to Darrel and then goes back to resting.

"Hylian forces, our camp is under attack! Any available forces, form up on me and take this abomination down!"

Chamdar had watched Polaris depart, having noted the transformations begin to affect the physical as well as the spiritual, the mental. The process was underway. All would transpire as it needed to. But in the wake of the Red Ice General's departure, he began to hear the alarm in the distance. He heard Hymns. He heard the lightsong. He heard tumult and he felt decay and blight.

Horns of alarm blared. An attack already? It seemed too soon even for the one who called himself Lord Grem. And here they were, already bereft of some of their strongest warriors. Grimacing at the inconvenience of it, when he yet had so much to do, he broke into a run.

Not Twili at all, he soon realized. A pittance of Hylian soldiers were struggling to ward off a horde of the sickened undead, the very same who had claimed the streets of Castle Town as their own, driving out the people and the government and setting them to flight.

But worst of all... a towering beast marauding through the open street, an amalgam of pilfered flesh ten paces tall, full of rot and poison.

It was perhaps the worst thing that could happen as the defenders prepared for what would likely be their last stand. Only the young Scion's Celestial... companion stood against it.

"Disable its knees and feet! If we can contain it, we can save the camp's food and water!"

Chamdar obliged, raising his staff and letting the divine light of the Goddesses flow through him, setting him alight. That light flowed out from his hand through the staff, rippling up and down the haft and setting the runes of the Sacred Realm to blazing. At its top, a great spear blade of white-gold light took shape, glaring brilliantly.

He threw himself into the press, whirling the staff and using the holy light blade to shear through poxed flesh, which seared away as it passed. Hardened rays of divine light lashed from his free hand, devastating the ranks of the redeads and driving back the Stalchildren who hated the light to terribly. With undead abominations such as these, clever constructs and artifice would serve him little. It called for more straightforward strategy.

He came to the side of the Celestial with his crystal sword as arrows pin-cushioned the enormous golem and fireballs from Hylian mages set it ablaze. It seemed hardly to notice as it dumped more undead onto the streets, and more plague into the ground beneath their feet. Beneath his breath Chamdar spoke an incantation in the lightsong, language of the Gods, and drove the butt of his staff into the dirt. Lines of light shot out in multiple directions, crisscrossing and encircling, slashing out into a wide circle. A guardian circle, with he and the Celestial at its epicenter.

"Combat the blight!" he called over the clamor. "I will hold back the horde!"

Redeads shambled into the edge of the circle and their flesh seared. They stumbled away, unable to penetrate its barrier. Chamdar withdrew his staff from the dirt and stalked to that edge, holy energies suffusing his aged limbs, and swept the light blade surmounting his staff outward, using its reach to slash apart the creatures as they drew backward. It would keep the creatures away for a time while the Celestial did what he could to force back the pestilence. Meanwhile, Chamdar stepped back out into the horde, cutting and hurling streaks of fiery light into the ranks of the dead.

Summary: Chamdar heeds Aris' call and starts helping to fight back the horde of the undead. He places a guardian circle around Aris so that he can't be swarmed while he combats the golem's plague, then continues to thin the herd.

It didn’t take much for Severa to accept that she would have to stop her father. He had good intentions she believed, but it was inevitable that his creations would someday grow so out of hand that they threatened the whole world and not just Hyrule. But Bernard’s words felt more desperate than that. He talked as if Sirius had dropped all pretense and taken up the mantle of his creator. It seemed fitting that discussions of Sirius’ own personal demise would take place here.

She followed Bernard to a hallway that seemed to have no end, where the floor moved independently of the walls. It felt like the endless room was scanning her mind, and given that this place was a creation of Sirius, it probably did.

The floor propelled them to a set of three doors. Bernard opened the first for her, and Severa was witness to what looked like a watercolor painting of Ithan and Lia atop a massive metal bird. While Ithan and Lia were particularly well defined, the rest of the image was not. Severa had seen this kind of portal before, peer far enough into the future and it gets murky, undefined. It seems the further an event in time is from you, the less certain it is. But while the sight before Severa lacked certainty, it had no shortage of desperation.

“Lia told me about this moment.” Bernard said. “It was what killed Ithan, before Morton finished the job.” He sighed deeply and hung his head. “You might need a hug for this next part.”

Severa listened on, but barely registering what Bernard said. An avalanche of information about her father, things she never knew and would have never wanted to know. Things she had to bury immediately, even knowing they would surface again later. She shook her head through tears and flushed the thoughts from her mind before she could settle on them. She shut the door herself and opened the second one.

Her father, again. The lab, sometime in the past, that much was certain, because Severa could see a portrait of Vera in the background, so clearly the two were still on good terms. Although the portrait looked strange, like it had been sloppily put together from pieces of different faces, and then traced over to form a new face. Bernard offered no explanation, or perhaps he did and she immediately purged it.

Severa shut the second door and opened the final. Desert. She saw faces of people she had met before, but never in this reality. Darrel, Jaden, Mirra, Polaris. Polaris might remember her, but the rest would have never met her. Severa gasped when she saw Lia slumped over, looking as defeated as she possibly could be, torn apart by her brothers death. She instinctively looked behind her to see if the current version of Lia in this memorial hall was near, but Severa was alone with Bernard and the doorway.

“This is your exit, Severa.” Bernard’s words took shape again, no longer impossible to accept. “You’ve spent years traveling worlds, but now your home world - as much as it could be - needs you again.”

Severa felt a thrusting force behind her, and before she could protest, was pushed through the doorway.

Summary: Severa travels from her alternate reality to the Desert. But she has not appeared in the desert yet, so not a single soul is aware of this yet.

Sirius - Fulmaren Lab - Day 3

Sirius rushed at Ratnis, impaling him with the Garo blades, and finding to his great shock, it was a killing blow. Ratnis, with a maniacal laugh, faded into the wind. Sirius changed back to humanoid form and rushed around the room looking for traces of Ratnis. It made no sense. He had fully expected Bernard to betray him and for Ratnis to show up, and everything had happened as planned. But now it was all changing.

Help had finally come, and in a form he did not think he'd see in a very long time. The Second Scion did indeed walk Hyrule once more. While the Triune found him to be a pariah of sorts, Aris was inspired by a legend willing to do the right thing even while counting up the cost of running afoul of them. It's part of why he fell for the Fifth Scion as well. His station was a rigid one, and Nayru only knew the level of censure he would have for interference in the affairs of mortals. That is what the Scions were for, to be that bridge between the divine and mundane...

After receiving instruction and sufficient protection to do so, Aris gathered his staff and sword together in his hands, pointing his blade and staff head downward while raising them alight. He began to chant the 33 Names of Din to coax Power into his Benediction. The Celestial tongue had a boom in its cadence, causing the very ground to tremble at its sound.

He could feel the filth corrupting everything, spreading throughout the groundwater and trying to get to the fields. Driving his weapons into the ground, a nova of Holy Light spread quickly as he continued to chant in his Angelic tongue. Arcs of luminescent cleansing brought rapid life back to the nearby ground as Aris continued to channel his blessings of Life.

"I will not allow this pestilence to continue!"

Summary: Aris says no to the blight, and invokes the Power of Din to combat it.

”Sunrise Knight!” Mirra laughed aloud, then stooped low to bow before Darrel. “I am at your service once more, m'lord.”

She rose and smiled contentedly at the sight of her old comrades. She rushed up to Darrel to embrace him in a tight hug, then saw Polaris and Jaden above, and waved up to them.

“Come,” she said, leading Darrel back up the dunes. “Lia has shared her memories with me, and I see clearly your goal. The final ore cannot be far. The Daybreak Sword is at hand!”

At the top of the dunes, Polaris hunched down to pull Darrel up the last few feet of sand, and Jaden likewise reached out to help Mirra. The General smirked under his grizzled scales. “Lemeris, you’re looking well.” She grinned and merely nodded without a word, then looked to Jaden. “It cannot be!” the Chieftain said, shocked. "Kae feared we had lost you to the Sacred Realm for good."

"Yes, I feared myself lost for a time...," Mirra said, her voice trailing off to a whisper, before she locked eyes with each companion in turn. "But the Fates have seen fit to return me hence. I do but pray I am not too late to aid in the Alliance's task."

The five assembled travelers looked out in the same direction over the undulant sands, their robes and garments brushed in the sandstrewn breeze, shoulder to shoulder with Lia seated on the bulbo at their side. The sun now tilted in the crystalline sky, a pale midday moon slung below it, and their shadows began to lengthen at their feet. Roc flew in a wide circle toward the group, and landed on Mirra's shoulder. In the distance, the simmering silhouettes of Gerudo ruins dotted the landscape, from the Arbiter’s Grounds to the Spirit Temple, and still others beyond.

“Lead the way, gentlemen,” she invoked. “Let us make time our ally.”

OOC: Mirra reunites with Darrel, Jaden, and Polaris, and prods the group to keep moving.

“Um… ok.” Ayala reponded while trying to hide the embarressment she felt from Elle’s display of fielty.

Oberon, on the other hand, couldn’t help but snicker, “Heh, she’s actually kneeling. Hey, hey can we make he my minon. Like a pecking order kind of thing. Like you, then me, then her.”

Ayala gently flicked the fairy’s head to get her to behave. “Sorry about her, she’s easily excited. Anyway we have to get to Ordon really fast so we’re going to have to fly.”

Ayala summoned her Wings of Light then toughed her hand to the Sage Coin now embedded in her armor. A small orb of light appeared in her hand and she touched it to Elle’s forehead. The light was absorbed by the woman’s body and suddenly a pair phantom like dragon wings appear on her back. A small thread of magic jutted out from Elle’s chest and snapped to the Sage Coin creating a tether so Ayala could pull inexperieced flier along more quickly.

“Great, now I’m pretty sure that should last all the way to the spring. Lets go!” Ayala lifted them both into the sky before Ayala had a chance to protest.

Summary:

Ayala excepts Elle’s offer, then drags her into the sky using magic she’s mostly confident in.

As the sun hung low in the evening sky, Taden’s icestorm dissipated into a cold rain, spreading out slowly over the twilit horizon.

They rode back to their bombed out tents at a walking pace, Captain Ryssdal on a white horse with the ribbons bearing his fallen Lieutenant Kenata’s insignia crumpled in his upturned palm, a few raindrops staining the dark purple fabric. Taden sat on a black, narrow-chested steed with his frock coat draped to either side, the Dusk Mail seized from the same fallen traitor Kenata’s breast now fastened firmly underneath.

All around them, Twili set about rebuilding the fort, as if to make camp for another night. Their enemy had been routed for now, and the men were weary from slaying their own countrymen.

“Did none of your officers foresee this attack from within?” Taden asked. They dismounted from their horses and handed their reins to a stable boy.

“We had heard rumors; the homefront has been restless these last six moons,” Simeon reflected. He looked out over the darkened hills of Hyrule Field in the dull halflight, the hovering smoke of the battlefield merging with the rains to make a shimmering yellow haze that seemed to augur only further death and decay. “Though none dare say it, taboos from the past have witnessed a resurgence thanks to this war.”

Taden looked sideways at Simeon as they worked their way through the fortress. All around them, he noticed the eyes of the distraught men following them, their morale strained by their brethren's onslaught.

"Perhaps further explanation is in order. Although Twili almost exclusively worship the Dusk now, such was not always so. I grew up in a time where a significant minority were still loyal to the Hyrulean gods. That all changed thirty odd years ago when those Goddess-worshippers launched an uprising against our Kingdom. Calling themselves the Twili Liberation Army, they considered our religion to be heresy and killed anyone who refused to convert."

"Hundreds of thousands were killed as a result of them, my own mother and sister included,” said Simeon, with a tinge of bitterness evident in his voice. "Fortunately those fanatics were soundly defeated in battle. The last of their kind were taken captive. No rebellion of the sort has happened since, but this war may have brought out the remaining few who held sympathy for their cause. Interactions with the Hyruleans have no doubt caused some to turn against us. If this continues, I fear we may end up winning Hyrule, only to lose our country in the end.”

“Some in your forces can still be trusted, surely,” Taden said. They had reached the command tent, quickly erected by Simeon’s soldiers and manned with a trio of heavily armored guards. Taden searched each of them in turn, and found their Twili eyes searching him right back.

“Only time will tell,” Simeon replied. “General Grem has many loyalists, in and outside his army, whatever uprisings may come.”

Finally, they reached Simeon’s personal quarters. A low table had a large parchment map of the territory sketched out in thick, black strokes of ink, with carved blocks representing the Twili army in the central plains and the exiled Hylians in the northern canyons. They glinted in the dancing torchlight like gemstones under a stream. In a hushed tone, Simeon tossed the damp purple ribbon from Kenata’s uniform onto the table, and looked down at Taden from his full height at the opposite end of the map.

“Perhaps I was wrong to dismiss you as just a treasure hunter. I sense in you a greater purpose than merely the desire for monetary gain. You take up more than the First Lieutenant’s power when you don the Dusk Mail,” Simeon spoke in low tones. “Until this war’s end, you are bound to fulfill its mission.”

Taden looked skeptically at Captain Ryssdal, until the Twili commander walked around the table and unsheathed his sword to place it to Taden’s shoulder, touching the edge of the black mail and cuirass Taden had claimed from Kenata's corpse.

“By the oath you swore to our Lord General Grem, I enlist thee as First Lieutenant to the Twili Occupation of Hyrule. Do you swear to defend the Twilight Realm from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and will you risk death in service to the same?”

Taden straightened up his back and shoulders as Captain Ryssdal withdrew his sword and picked up Kenata’s insignia from the table, touching it to Taden's ill-gotten cuirass. It seemed to glow with an otherworldly purple light for a moment, and the small token Taden had received from Grem then appeared in the air bathed in the same hue. The two objects merged into an Icon with a dark medal hanging from its ribbon, etched and lined with softly glowing Twili lettering, fastened to Taden’s black breastplate and mail that bore the same lustre composed of finely etched runes.

“So be it,” Ryssdal said, nodding solemnly. “You have hereby taken up the mantle of the late Kenata. Lieutenant Horwendil, we ride at dawn.”

Taden turned his back to Simeon and paced around the quarters, hands folded behind his back. After a few paces, he looked up to his new commander with one eyebrow raised under his stark white locks.

“But consider, my liege—would that you rode through the night, and made war on the exiles at first light? You will have the element of surprise, and your men would delay not another hour in returning to their homeland. Would not those of faltering convention be swayed by the final triumph of the Dusk? Let them sate their anguish at the slaughter of their comrades with the long-sought balm of conquest!”

Simeon weighed Taden’s words carefully. His eyes flitted over the enchanted Icon he had bestowed on his new lieutenant, to the polished stone blocks spread out over his map. The fires of war that gleamed over the carved figures now flashed from his new Lieutenant's eyes even more brightly. “Very well,” he rejoined. “Time is of the essence. Rally the frontlines, Lieutenant, and take my Captain's Guard with you. They know my men better than anyone, and their stealth will serve you well under cover of night. I shall bring up the rear guard.”

Taden nodded, then turned to rush out the canvas door of the Captain’s tent. Outside, he unhooked his horse from its post and jumped into the saddle, then unsheathed his sword Aurgelmir and rode through the fort’s main path.

"Burn the wreckage and saddle the horses!" he cried out. "Soldiers of the Dusk, we ride for the canyons! To arms! To arms!"

Soldiers in every direction looked up from their work clearing wreckage and stacking logs, and caught sight of the shining Twili Icon at Taden’s breast that bore all the dark power of his rank.

“To arms once more! You shall not abide another night in these foreign hills, but in victory or death for your country!”

The gathered men roared roughly with their swords clanging in the air, beating their hands on loose helmets and shields to make a triumphant racket as the first flames began to lick the abandoned fortress.

"Rise again, Twili, against the exiles of Hylia, and let death be the harvest in your wake!" He rode out ahead of the fortress into the gathering evengloom, followed swifty and silently into the dusk by the Captain's Guard, a mounted vanguard of assassins.

OOC: Taden and Simeon regroup at the Twili base in Hyrule Field, and Simeon explains the origins of the ongoing Twili sectarian war. He promotes Taden to First Lieutenant, giving him Kenata's Icon to wear over the Dusk Mail, then orders him to rally the Twili army for its final assault on Hidden Kakariko. They strategize to ride through Night 3 and arrive at Dawn 4, with Taden leading a special advance force of Captain's Guard assassins and Ryssdal in charge of the larger cavalry and rear guard. They set fire to what remains of the Hyrule Field camp after Kenata's attack, meaning the Dusk Warp that Taden opened from Ordon Spring will soon lead only to the charred remnants of a Twili fort, but may reveal a trail to Simeon's army on the march.

The laughing of Ratnis was all around him. Sirius wasn’t fully prepared for this encounter yet. He had vaguely entertained the notion of course, but there was simply not enough time, not anymore. Sirius had used up the last of his emergency power to bring the lab online, and had been relying on the basic security of the lab to keep Ratnis’ dimensional prison shut. Now Sirius’ demonic father was free to roam the lab, free to roam the world. The only thing worse would be if Vera somehow managed to break free of her soul curse and invade again. Luckily that wasn’t happening.

“Okay, think Sirius...think…” Sirius frantically spoke to himself.

“Out of time are we?” Ratnis voice floated around the room.

Sirius ran over it all in his mind, the long history. Ratnis sought to unseat Demise from his place in history as the most notable Ma, taking up the mantle of the world’s central bringer of chaos and destruction. Sirius had been born in a dark storm alongside his brother Davus, both meant to be tools of the darkness, of Ratnis. But it was not meant to be, when the witch Rhunerys had stolen Sirius away, intent on turning him against Ratnis in her own quest to revive Demise.

That was all so long ago. Since then Sirius had forged alliances with Rhunerys, turned on her, only to ally with her again out of necessity and convenience. And then she had faded from his life, as he grew too powerful for her to control anymore. In the same way that Bernard had betrayed Sirius, Sirius had betrayed Rhunerys.

Sirius felt a searing pain along his cheek as Ratnis rushed past him, striking Sirius to the floor. Sirius jumped to his feet and turned around looking for his attacker.

“Afraid to face me directly?” Sirius asked, realizing immediately that couldn’t be further from the truth. A shadow rose from the ground, forming back into Ratnis bit by bit. Ratnis grabbed Sirius by the throat and lifted him off the ground. And then Sirius felt it, the twinge of familiar darkness, the cold reach of death. A very specific death, the one he had felt mere days before when first put into the ground by Kokage. Sirius had died then, and Ratnis had taken his chance to inject more of his essence into the corpse, controlling Sirius’ body for a time.

“I can see in your eyes how even in your final moments, all you choose to do is summarize your situation, looking for a way out.” Ratnis hissed. “Reflection may be wise, given that this will be your last chance to truly live.” Ratnis was somewhat mistaken of course. Sirius had died, and was still dead in literal terms. His body had not been revived but was simply being kept in a neutral state, preventing decay from taking place. Sirius mind and soul were not truly one with his body but using them like a foreign vessel.

Ratnis tightened his grip as Sirius began to attempt to speak, cutting off his words. “No more words from you. You’ve said enough for a million lifetimes.” Sirius attempted to speak anyway, and miraculously seemed to catch the tiny bit of curiosity that Ratnis had.

“It is almost impressive that you continue to fight.” Sirius stopped trying to speak, and instead gave a single, slow wink. Ratnis grew enraged, he’d seen this before. The warning that Sirius was about to use a trick up his sleeve, the warning that Sirius had once again played his enemy. Ratnis would not have it, and immediately crushed Sirius’ throat. But the madmans eyes stayed open, as he gave another wink. A hologram appeared behind Sirius. It was just like when Ratnis had briefly controlled Sirius’ corpse and encountered holograms before.

“Hi Ratnis. You probably did something stupid, like crush my windpipe, or rip out my tongue, or burned my stuffed animal collection. In that order. Or maybe you didn’t even get that far before-” The holograms voice was cut off by a generic robotic voice blasting over the labs intercom system.

(“GRAVEYARD PROTOCOL COMPLETE!”)

The hologram of Sirius continued speaking, while the real Sirius was smiling ear to ear, crushed windpipe having no effect on his elevated mood.

“You’re evil, but really you aren’t that clever. You chose literally the worst possible moment to try and kill me. And by the way, I’m already dead! I died three days ago, and I’ve been running a program to properly merge my mind, spirit, and body back together. I had to steal some energy from uh...let’s call it heaven, and do a few other things that quite frankly would be boring to explain.

The gist of it is, I’m about to be alive again, and life energy is flowing into my body right now. So whatever you just did, I just undid. Go ahead, look.”

Ratnis turned his attention from the hologram to the real Sirius, and Sirius neck injury was restored, as if it never happened. The hologram kept speaking while Ratnis filled with rage.

“I didn’t know you were coming, Ratnis. This was originally going to just be a casual revival. I thought I’d have some tea. But then, that’s gotta make you wonder - how did I make a prerecorded message about it?”

Ratnis turned his attention to the real Sirius again. Sirius took over speaking as the hologram vanished.

“You’ll never know the answer.” Sirius brought a single fist forward, one that was brimming with life energy tuned very specifically to Sirius soul. Life energy that if brought into contact with any other being would immensely potent, immensely destructive. The punch hit Ratnis, and initially felt rather weak. But he still dropped Sirius to the ground, checking his own body for damage. He started laughing, it had clearly failed. He moved to attack Sirius again, but his legs did not respond.

“Bye dad. See you whenever someone manages to piece together the billion fragments you are about to be split into.” Sirius couldn’t truly kill Ratnis in this way, but the potency of the attack would shatter him. It was already over. Ratnis snarled in rage as his body began to fade into the wind like dust, cursing Sirius in a thousand languages.

Sirius just smiled, sat down on the floor, and broke into maniacal laughter. He was alive again, properly alive. A singular form. He hastily took out a glass capsule and waved it through the Ratnis dust cloud, capturing a portion of the essence.

“For safe keeping.” Sirius capped the container and went back to laughing. It was a good day.

Summary: Sirius died at the start of the RP, and though he was revived a few posts later, it was sort of a fake revival, with his soul being cobbled together with his corpse that was being artificially kept from decaying. Sirius had a program in his lab running that was meant to restore his body to life and merge it back with his soul. This program happened to complete EXACTLY when the demon Ratnis was attempting to destroy Sirius completely. This ultimately resulted in Ratnis being shattered into a billion pieces, and Sirius is now fully revived and feeling great.

Polaris snorted. ”I wouldn’t count on her being an ally. Time is the manipulator of man. Still, we’ve a need to press on, and so we shall.”

Stepping to the fore of the group, the air shimmered before him ever so briefly as he tapped into the magic of his Mark, at his back Jaden’s disquiet was palpable. Their destination revealed, Polaris severed the flow of magic, the Mark disappearing an instant before he looked over his shoulder.

”I believe the ore we seek can be located in the old mines. It will be a trek, but no so overlong that we shouldn’t reach them by nightfall.”

Scanning those gathered heroes among whose ranks he found himself, he sighed discontentedly. Perhaps he had been wrong earlier. And yet, that wasn’t a chance he found himself willing to take. A long pair of storm grey knives, each with a viciously curved blade took form in the blink of an eye, one in each hand.

”We should be on our guard.”

With one hooked blade, he motioned them to follow. Without further conversation, he turned and strode purposefully across the dunes twirling the lightning forged blades absentmindedly as the rest of the group fell in step alongside him.

Half of the reddish orange sun still peaked over the horizon as they came to the nearest edge of the ruins. Pausing, the General reminded the company, ”Just on the other side of this forgotten place lies our destination.”

Summary:

Travel post. Polaris uses the Chieftains Mark again, poor Jaden. The group is now at the edge of ruins seen in Mirra’s post. Short plot mover.

“Bloody ‘ell, this ‘ole place is ruined. Ruins on topp’a ruins. It’s a right shit ‘ole.”

Tobias had taken to muttering to himself a day or so ago whilst wandering through the clusterfuck of a town. Hell, it couldn’t even be called that. It was an insult to upstanding clusterfucks the worldwide! The lavish life he and Harken had dreamt of wouldn’t be had here. Not any time soon at least.

He’d clambered atop this sagging bell tower to survey the remnants of what was to be his kingdom and was hours ago depressed by that crushing realization. Hyrule would rebuild. Well, if they won the war that is. And hell, he may even find himself in charitable mood from time to time and pitch in. For what better way to the hearts of men than through their, well hearts. Home is where the heart is and all that lot. He thought it all hairwash, but if that nonsense got him a stranglehold on the underground, then by the Four themselves he’d play the part.

Just as he was about to start the climb down from his precarious perch, a bit of rubble shifted and fell several yards away, crashing to the already pitted cobble stone street below in a thunderous cloud of dust.

Drawing a gauntleted arm up to cover his face, he still suffered a coughing fit as he sucked in all sorts of bits of dust, debris and whatever the hell else lay down below.

As the cloud began to settle, a bluish glimmer caught his eye something half obscured before the collapse was now visible and it looked… valuable.

Shimmying partways down the wall, Tobias kicked off hard, pirouetted mid-air and drove one blast knuckle enclosed fist into the wall of a building across the alley with a satisfying mini-explosion. He smiled. And then the wall gave way.

“Ah bollocks.”

Stone and mortar rained down above him and it was all the gangster could do to swat it aside as he fell. Pepperwhistle struck the ground with a hard thud and the air was forced out of him.

He sat up cursing. “Sakon’s sagging arse, I could use a nice cuppa Rosie Lee.”

Shakily he rose to his feet, flex his hands stretching his aching back and in general making sure all of his important bits still worked like they were supposed to.

Satisfied all was in working order, he brushed himself off and straightened his vest and hat. If he was leaning slightly more on his mallard headed cane than before, who was here to judge?

Sifting his way back through the ruins he found a more suitable route to the shiny object that caught his eye. The drooping stairs looked ominous, but aside of a few creaks and groans, all from the stairs of course. Again, no one round to prove otherwise. He found himself kneeling by a peculiar looking controller of sorts. He prodded it gingerly and it lit up with an eery blue glow and spat out a damned wraith! Falling backwards he crab walked back to the stairs, eyes locked on the apparition hovering before him.

It bobbed there, ghostly blue robes dead still even in the wind with a wicked looking scythe slung across its back.

And.

That’s it.

That’s all the damned thing did. Just float there, looking all menacing and such. With the agility of a gymnast Tobias leapt to his feet and marched straight up to the creature with the all encompassing confidence of a god among men and creatures (prove otherwise, I dare ya, yeh sod). “Well, yer a right terrifyin’ beastie aren’ yeh?”

Cautiously, he bent down and retrieved the controller. It was roughly ovular in shape and all sorts of little buttons and knobs. Curious, he flicked one of the knobs which caused the reaper to float back from him. Pulling the knob towards himself brought the reaper forward.and pressing any of the various buttons caused the construct to perform any number of actions. He also found that by holding two buttons at once while speaking, he was able to give the reaper commands which it then carried out without the pressing of any buttons at all.

Satisfied, he pressed a button on the side that called the reaper back to him. As the beast dissolved into the controller, Tobias found that he could secure the controller to the gauntlet of one of his blast knuckles rather securely. With a sinister grin, the gangster started making his way out of city.

“Right ‘o, I believe it’s ‘ero time.”3rd day

It’d taken a hell of a lot longer getting his affairs in order than he’d imagined it would. And even longer still convincing that old codger Bart that he hadn’t lost his bloomin’ mind and that was only pretending to “take off the black hat and chase after hero’s glory,” as the cantankerous bastard had called it.

So it was later than he’d wanted when he set out looking for the last vestiges of the Hylian resistance, and a damned good thing too. If he’d left when he wanted to, that big shamblin’ herd of rotted corpses, a gift from the bonehead in the floating castle (damned if that wasn’t impressive), no doubt, would’ve ended up aft of him instead of fore. Even then, a few of the ones in the back took notice of him right quick so that he was forced to smash in their pulpy melon heads and slather himself in their nastiness.

He stunk to high heavens and felt like arse. Even worse so when the mush dried, but the rat arsed shites hadn’t bothered him since. And so it was thus painted that he entered the Hylian camp to shouts and alarms.

A voice, disembodied as far as Toby could tell, rose above the din.

"Hylian forces, our camp is under attack! Any available forces, form up on me and take this abomination down!"

“Take down the abomination?” Tobias looked around, there corpses shuffling along hungrily and all moany like as far as the eye could see.

“Bugger me if I know which one ‘e’s talkin abou’.”

Figuring it wouldn’t matter which one he started with, Tobias cracked his knuckles and tapped the controller on his gauntlet. The wraith rose high above him awaiting its commands. Tobias winked, and it was surely lost on the puppet, but it pleased him to do so all the same.

“Alrigh’ beastie, ‘ows about we get to makin’ these wankers dead again?”

Summary:

Tobias finds the Reaper Tuner that Quell lost… a long time ago. And sets off to do some do gooding.

The words of the lightsong--unintelligible to most mortal ears--leapt from his tongue, taking form before him in radiations of sonic light. Those coronal waves erupted out from his lips in a cone that warped the air before it, and where it struck, desiccated limbs were torn free of their sockets and brittle bones shattered as though beneath a hammer stroke. The language of the gods tore apart the unclean, crawling things, drowning out their paralyzing wails and robbing them of their power.

And even as the song continued to issue forth from his tongue, Chamdar was among them with his staff whirling. The luminous spearblade at its end ripped the creatures apart, and streams of sizzling energies lashed from his left hand, punching through flesh, bone, and sinew, leaving in its wake only smoking ruin.

The undead were no match for him. For them. They fell as wheat before the scythe.

Still, more poured in and it was all Chamdar could do to drive them back, to hold them from penetrating deep into the open streets of Hyrule's last safehold. Too many refugees, sick or wounded or both, clogged the main thoroughfare. They would be easy prey. No, this had to end here.

His lightspear took a gibdo down at the knees, cutting its legs clean off, and suddenly there was a pause. An opening. Breathing heavily--lamenting the bygone days of his youth when physical battle was so much more his thirst--he looked to see that this guardian spell was holding. Even so, Aris was surrounded on all sides by sickly redeads, the skeletal stalchildren, all clawing at the barrier of light to get at the creature within. All unable to do so.

And yet the walls of light shining up from the dirt were shimmering. Wavering. The barrier wouldn't hold forever.

From a distance, a thought struck him in that moment of calm. Chamdar knew this Celestial. He hadn't been able to pin down its identity at first, but now he remembered. Remembered harsh words that had once passed between them. Honest words, but harsh ones. Celestials and Scions were of different realms after all, and were meant to remain that way. One was not to meddle in the worlds and the lives of the other. Aris Mastigos, that was his name. A once-companion of Helena Orieda, before Chamdar convinced her to fall.

Aris put everything he could muster, which in the mortal world was not the full measure of his power, into his cleansing. Still, the abomination continued to pump its toxin into the land, blighting all that it touched. What had the towering Celestial said?

Right, Chamdar thought, the knees.

The monster, the great amalgam of sickly flesh, was in a low crouch. Tendrils had issued forth, plunging into the dry earth. It couldn't move, not while it was plaguing the lands here. It was vulnerable, all of its mindless focus on combating the purification song of its angelic adversary.

Chamdar left the encroaching horde to the archers, and to those few soldiers who had lined up at their backs. He shoved his way through the press, still singing the lightsong to drive back those creatures who tried to leap on him. Mages continued to hurl flame down into the surging tide of the dead, turning the whole shambling herd into a wildfire.

Ducking around a redead, pivoting on the balls of his feet and spinning around to its left, he came to the beast itself. Chamdar's lightspear slashed through several of the tendrils infecting the earth beneath his feet, severing their connection and causing them to flail in the air and wildly spray their sickness through the air. A gibdo came at him from behind, shrieking as it leaped on his shoulders. A burst of holy sound, a single harsh note, sent it flying away in pieces. In the moment of distraction, an arm swung out, freed to move now that its tendrils had been cut free. A huge, pestilent fist struck him square in the right shoulder and hurled him from his feet. He landed hard in the dirt, rolling onto his back as the best rose to its feet above him and lifted the first once again. This time the downward force would crush him.

It took one step as he cocked its arm back for the lethal blow. That one step was all Chamdar needed. Taking the haft of his weapon in two hands he drove the luminous blade into the knee of the creature's lead leg, letting the lightblade shatter outward in a burst of pure divine energies while piercing the flesh and bone. The ensuing explosion tore the golem's leg apart, and while it began to wobble, the Second Scion arched his back against the dirt, tilted his head back and released a torrent of sharp notes. The sonic wave of varicolored light slammed into the tottering beast's chest and tore it open. The force of the blow coupled with its suddenly broken balance sent it crashing backwards to the turf.

"Mastigos!" Chamdar called from where he lay, the words emanating out in the lightsong, which he knew the angel would well understand, "the connection is broken. Cleanse the rest of the taint and let's rid ourselves of this abomination! Something dark indeed is behind this; it will take our combined light to put it down."

Even as the song leapt from his tongue, the creature was already clawing at the parched dirt, pulling itself back to its one foot.

Summary: Chamdar is using holy light and the lightsong (audible divine energy) to tear the wave of undead from HCT a collective second asshole. During a brief pause in the fighting he realizes that he remembers Aris from an earlier encounter. Then he jumps back into the fray and severs most of the tendrils pumping sickness into the earth, taking the opening that creates to blow up the golem's left leg and send it sprawling.

These sands were full of magicks. Those of his people, and the dead, and of other paradigms. His senses were in overdrive. This may have been one of the reasons among others that he drank so much. Being sober meant he felt all of it, and in many cases, it was distracting. However, he still did not know why he felt his Chieftain's presence so often.

Normally, he'd have plenty to say. A joke to crack or two, so as to lighten the mood. Instead, he focused, observed, and was ready to defend the group should a threat find them.

He kept thinking that it was too easy. Someone or something had to be waiting for them. This desert was notorious for housing colossal beasts, and worms. He could handle the bandits. A day ago, Twili were routed to the last standing, or so he thought. And he'd aided in a massive rescue effort here six months prior.

In the reddened sky, he saw these ruins. Somehow, they had never appeared on any map of this place he'd ever seen. And the cartography units had been from one end of this land to another. Some had even found islands on the sea, and a hidden isolationist kingdom known for having birthed a Hero of Time in a previous era. But never here. This was the kind of place only the Chieftain knew about. But where was the power coming from? Who but the leader of the Sheikah could see Truth among those present? Or among those who were not made known?

He still felt like the group was being followed. But those ruins were breathtaking. Architecture unlike any he'd ever laid eyes upon. If only there were more time to explore.

"What we seek is behind those walls. Stay together. We know not what else inhabits these ancient halls."

Spymaster, if you have guided us here, thank you. I am not worthy to take up your mantle just yet. Help us win this war and craft the history books in Hylia's favor.

Summary: Jaden really doesn't like feeling the Chieftain nearby. He never leaves the village. But these ruins are a huge opportunity to turn the tide in this war. While unable to shake the unsettling feeling he has, Jaden realizes his sobriety also makes him hyper-sensitive to magical presences. It isn't just the stimulants in the Kakariko Grave Lotus Tea...where the $#@! is the Chieftain?

Surprises continued after he'd left the Sacred Realm. The Second Scion still walked this plane on his own terms, and Terminians had found their way here as well. All peoples had something to lose if the Twili overtook this land. The Triune would be at risk if the Sacred Realm had another breach so soon after Sourbeneton had attempted his usurpation.

The Second Scion though, he and Aris had a bit of an odd history. It had been millennia, a disagreement lost to antiquity, and it was the only time his inner flame burned for another before he'd met Lady Bryseis. If Chamdar had not met Helena, there would be no Scions. What happened in ages past was necessary. The four prior were imbued at the proper time for proper reasoning. One was the progenitor of his companion's clan, rising above a career of organized crime and escaping the hangman to become a driving force behind Sheikah preservation.

Aris could feel the land healing beneath him. Purification in the hymns and benedictions ripping the toxins from soil and stream. Aquifers no longer aerating agonizing death or the curse of second breaths.

"It is a relief to make your acquaintance, Terminian. While I believe it prudent to deliver Final Death to these wretched things, I believe their genitals have long rotted off."

Raising his staff and gathering Light from the Sun and the Heavens, Aris prepared a Smiting Malediction ready to unleash upon the flesh golem. Chamdar's technique was beyond on point.

"To think what our Light would do in the Sacred Realm, Talesin. We smite in the name of this land!"

Arcs of blazing sunlight burst forth from Aris' Deku staff, torrenting in multiple directions. One disintegrated the hewn leg as more colonized undead tried to climb free from its husk, and others made craters amidst the Kakariko grass as they purified more shambling hordes from Hyrule.

He retained some of the energy to resume charging it for one more blast at the golem.

"I gather more Light to put an end to it, and await your signal to dispense retribution!"

Summary: It's been a good long while, but Aris is glad to fight alongside Chamdar once more. And he also welcomes Tobias to the defense of the Sheikah homeland.

Elly kept watch over Kae, ready to knock her out of the way of any sweeping monstrous tree limbs. Her friend looked uneasy, and began to sweat profusely. She could see a tinge of pink in the perspiration on her forehead, and violet tears started to trickle from her eyes and drip from her nose. They crystallized as they moved across her face, which only made things more creepy. Her Light Medallion glowed around its housing, trying to contain further problems, but it was visibly taxing, even for Sage magicks.

Whatever was in there wasn't good for Kae. She had to get out soon, but from what she knew of telepathy in the Sacred Realm, breaking such a link at this time would not be wise.

Undead were shambling into their general area, and from what she understood of them, the scent of blood only made things more attractive. Closing her eyes briefly and taking a whiff, Kae had some of that mixed into the sweat...what the hell was going on inside that thing's mind?

"Kae, if you can hear me, you need to wrap it up in there. You are in danger. The village is under attack!"

Earth shook underfoot. Death's stench only got stronger. She had to keep the wretched away from Kae, maybe give her some more time.

Before they got too close, she gave herself some Shadow reinforcements with a brief kata. Six doppelgängers ran out and went to work on Elly's behalf. Her hooked kunai on chains did the rest. They didn't make much noise. Neither did her decoys. They didn't seem to hurt these creatures much, but they did allow her to go around to different groups and drop bodies for the second time. It worked after she somehow lived through the lake, and somehow she'd figured out how to expand upon the clone functionality...

These looked unlike any she'd ever seen before. What were these things?

Summary: Kae is sweating blood as a result of the trauma from her psychic link, as well as crying violet tears. Elly doesn't want to forcibly break it, but zombies have migrated into the area, as have some of the warped flesh shamblers that Vykos crammed into the flesh golem's body cavity and limbs.

Creepy child-like giggles filled Kae's ears repeatedly as the ginger-haired warrior woman kept dying. How did her sword get to the past? And who was wielding it? Why did her death keep warping her mind and bothering her so much? And what was that pain in her gut?

Everything in this space smelled of death in various stages. Entrails, viscera, brains, bile, worse. Of the millions of ways this person was murdered, every odor permeated and assaulted Kae's senses.

Colors started to invert in her vision, flickering chaotically. Static also flickered, distorting everything. She could comprehend speech playing backwards. She could hear the woman talking, taunting the forest girl...her cadences and accentures were Sheikah. Her stances mirrored that of Jaden's, too. But she was not dressed as one, and the Shadow Folk did not widely utilize Sentinel training until about two hundred years ago, when the Patriarch was inducted...

Sheikah did not have red hair like that either.

"What did this woman do to you that you hate her so deeply? You are making this seem as though it is my fault, because she is Sheikah, as am I."

She could hear Elly shouting, but could not make out what she was saying at all. And things only continued to get more visibly unstable. The thought noise only got more intense; it would be difficult to remain here for long.

With Ratnis taken care of, Sirius needed to tend to other pressing business. Alarms were still going off as the Lab safeguards needed to be enabled. Sirius was still in his bedroom, where a set of emergency master controls were located. He walked to his desk and waved a hand across the top, making several ancient hylian symbols with his hand movements, activating the rune panel. The holographic controls materialized, and he swept a long horizontal slider-switch all the way left from right, then spun a holograph dial fully clockwise. A sound like steam escaping an engine was released, easing the tension in the air as the alarms died with it. Distant slamming sounds could be heard as numerous lab blast doors dropped and locked, and then several quick tweeting sounds to indicate that defenses were in place, level one defenses at least. Simultaneously to all this activity, other systems humming to life, as the lab switched over to using its tertiary energy systems, with the primary and emergency backups both blown out thanks to the recent days activities.

“I hope I did the right thing, Bernard.” Sirius said aloud, shutting off the rune panel as he completed his work. The east wall of the bedroom immediately faded out of existence, being replaced by a shimmering semi-translucent energy field. He could see out into the woods, and knew it was time to relocate. Not physically of course, it would take a few months to repair the flight modules. But nonetheless the lab couldn’t be in the forest anymore.

Not interested in resuming voice commands now that Bernard was gone, Sirius brought the same runel panel back up and summoned a report of the trans-dimensional library pathway. One of Sirius’ greatest projects, it let him pierce not just into another reality, but to another plane of life, a psychic graveyard where certain psychic spirits went after death, though not all. And in time most lost their sense of self, merging with the great net of psychic energy that spanned the multiverse. However, right now Ithan, Jeskai, and Efran still had their sense of self intact and Sirius had bridged his own metaphysical library to the psychic graveyard.

“Note to self: Rename Psychic Graveyard to something more mystical sounding.” Sirius left the note in his daily work log, flagging it for daily reminder until he had a cooler name worked out.

Summary: Sirius is bringing his lab back to full defensive power, and preparing to move it out of this reality and into another.

Davus had stayed as an energy field thinly stretched out, as thin as he could without stretching the limits of his strength. He followed the group from a distance, and though he knew he was mostly undetected, it was likely at least one of them was suspicious of his presence.

For now Lia seemed safe again, but Davus couldn’t leave. The return portal was closed, and at this point he’d be better served waiting for a good chance to reveal his presence and state his good intentions. Though it was laughable to think that anyone who had dealt with him before would trust his word, least of all Lia. So for the moment, he stayed invisible and stayed distant.

Summary: Davus is still following the group secretly, waiting for a chance to say hello without getting punched in the face.

They came upon the ruins that their intelligence reports had earlier indicated they would find just as the sun began to slope slowly through the western sky toward the sandstone hills and cliffs far in the distance. The architecture here was remarkable, and distinctly not Gerudo in origin, unless they had broken from their typical conventions at some point in the past. Just by the way the stone was worn smooth at its edges he could tell that much of what was visible above the ground had many times been buried and unearthed by the sand and the arid desert winds. The broken stonework all about alternated seemingly at random between being pocked or polished by the elements.

Still, as Darrel strode through amongst toppled columns and scattered rubble, he was gripped by a strange feeling in his gut. Something was amiss. Something that had nothing to do with the remnants of the Twili encampment that had not so long ago been erected within these ruins, using the ruins as relief against the harsh desert sandstorms. Here in the desert, where the Gerudo had long dwelt in tune with the spiritual energies in a way no other people could claim... here is powers had always taken a strange turn. His offensive capabilities were no greater, really, than they were elsewhere, but his spiritual perceptions had always been keenest amongst the sands. Whatever he was feeling, he knew it had something to do with this spiritual intuitions.

"What we seek is behind those walls. Stay together. We know not what else inhabits these ancient halls."

"There is little of these walls left standing," he replied in a low voice. "At least here on the surface; who can say what we'll find when we make our way down?"

Jaden gave Darrel a sidelong glance. Something was clearly making the young Sheikah Sentinel uneasy too.

"Come on everyone, let's have a look around and see what we can find."

The group fanned out in every direction, combing through the unearthed ruins in search of whatever awaited them beneath the surface. Whatever this place had been, Darrel mused to himself as he stepped over the broken half-cylinder of a felled stone pillar, it had been massive. It must have been, in some era long past, truly a sight to behold, an oasis of civilization in this desiccated basin.

Rising from the dunes at the far edge of the ruin he could make out a ridgeline of low sandstone cliffs. He pressed ahead, ascending to the crest of one dune by way of a fallen wall of stone, which stuck out from the slope, clearly having been revealed by the sandstorm that had buffeted them upon their arrival through Lia's portal. With firm footing, he perched atop the mound of sand and rock and scanned the base of the cliffs ahead.

Eventually, his gaze alighted on the very thing they were looking for. There, shaded beneath an angular outcrop of stone that served as a natural overhang, he could make out a hole in the smooth face that might have escaped his notice but for the sand-worn timbers forming a frame around it. That was it, the mine shaft they'd been told would be here.

"Oi! It's here!" he called back to the others over his shoulder. "I've found our way in!"

Summary: Quick one-off to keep things moving. Darrel and company look around the ruins that were unearthed by the sandstorm they walked in to through Lia's portal, and after a bit of searching and some uneasy feelings he locates the mine shaft bored into a series of sandstone hills that they were told would lead down from the surface into whatever happens to be down below.

”Let’s go,” Mirra nodded to Darrel. “Roc will stay here and watch the entrance with Lia.”

Mirra rolled her shoulder, and her white gyrfalcon hopped from it to the pommel of Hathor’s saddle, screeching lightly in recognition of Mirra’s command. Lia remained listless and withdrawn on her perch, but she lifted her bound hands slowly to pet Roc’s feathers.

The four turned to go into the hollowed out mountainside, their eyes straining to adjust to the sudden darkness after the harsh desert sun.

“Here, take these,” Polaris called out from the front of the group. He passed along three elongated chunks of Red Ice, warm to the touch and emitting a faint amber glow from within the red crystal. Raising hers up, Mirra saw the rising ceiling of the first chamber of the mine opening up onto a high, rounded cavern that stretched for several yards, at the top of which lay a colony of black Keese.

Their yellow eyes suddenly flashed open and a litany of shrieks filled the wide chamber. The squeaking rodents plunged down towards them in a torrent and they ducked, with only enough time for Polaris to shield them with a crude dome of ice. As they turned in a whirling cloud above them, they noticed the Keese’s fur beginning to glow yellow and spark.

They rolled out as the crackling swarm withdrew and unsheathed their weapons. Darrel swung Morning’s Edge in a wide arc and several fell, while Polaris and Jaden swiped at the air with twin blades in either hand and dead bats piled up around them. Mirra pulled back the string of her bow and unleashed Light Arrows on the colony, felling the last of the Keese down to one. It flew towards Darrel, and he caught it in one hand before it could strike his face, only to be shocked by a bolt of electricity that fired from the monster’s yellow charged fur. He flung it to the ground and stomped on it with the heel of his boot.

“Well, that was unexpected,” Darrel chided, rubbing the inside of his palm and singed fingertips. “I wonder where Keese would find Thunder magic all the way down here…”

At the far end of the chamber, they found two narrow gates leading off in different directions. The light of Polaris’s red shards cast as far down them as they could see, leading off into darkness.

“We should split up to search the area more quickly,” Jaden suggested, beginning to slink off towards the tunnel on the right.

“Nay, we should stay together in case one of us is injured or becomes lost,” Mirra warned. She stood beside Polaris and Darrel and glanced to the Sunrise Knight.

“Jaden is right,” he said. “We must risk it to save more time. Polaris, you go with him.” Darrel gestured down the right path at exchanged looks with Polaris.

“Fine, but be on your guard,” Mirra said, handing Polaris and Jaden each a Fairy in a Bottle.

Mirra and Darrel continued ahead. The dark tunnels only seemed to close in around them, the ceiling growing lower and the walls growing narrower as they proceeded. Shadows seemed to push in around the edges of red light from Polaris’s small shards, as if the very darkness of the mines grow thick as smoke the deeper they went.

At last, they came on a wide, open chamber with a low roof barely above their heads. Their lights exposed the edges of a churning sand pit, and a single overturned boulder a few paces out into the sands. Darrel unwound the faintly glowing chains around his waist and wrists and handed one end to Mirra, then ran ahead through the sucking sands until he reached the boulder’s platform.

“Ha! Easier than I thought,” he laughed, waving Mirra on. She skimmed across the sands briskly but tripped at the far end, her knees suddenly lurching forward into the mirky pit, only for Darrel to stoop down and catch her outreached hand. He pulled her up by the chain linking them and righted her next to him on the stone. Holding their Red Ice shards up again, they saw another stone further out on their path, and could barely discern the glistening outline of a metal arch further off in the gloom.

“After you,” Darrel said, keeping his sense of humor about him in the gathering dark. “Won’t be long now before we’re on the heels of victory.”

No sooner than the confident smirk crossed Darrel’s lips did a trio of dazzling Spume burst from the dark sands in the distance in a flurry of sparks.

“Duck!” he shouted, pulling Mirra downward and sheltering them both with Morning’s Herald, the sacred shield absorbing the electricity. He rolled forward and sprang towards a further stone block, landing lightly and brandishing his chained blade.

Mirra fired a Light Arrow into a second cretin as Darrel dispatched the first. Together, they vanquished the third amphibious vermin with a combined strike, and the room fell dark again.

“Come, before still more awake,” Mirra whispered to Darrel, lifting up her red icicle for the final leap across the sands.

When they reached the flattened platform at the far end of the sand pits, they found a metallic groove carved into the stone leading in a straight line directly into the wall. The rough, sandstone wall of the cavern was framed by a polished arc of metalwork. Darrel approached the wall methodically and ran both hands over the rocky surface.

Mirra knelt down, and touched the cool steel of the railing that ran straight through the floor, following its trail to a point at the bottom of the wall, like a track whose cart would smash right into it. At its terminus, she found a small, locked treasure chest.

“How’s your lockpicking?” Mirra asked Darrel, no key in sight.

He raised one palm and jerked his arm at the shoulder—a small burst of Spirit force fired from his hand and blasted the latch apart.

“Legendary,” he replied.

Mirra walked up to the chest and reached down to pull out a single gray scroll tied with a piece of hemp from inside. She unfurled the scroll, and found a tiered map drawn in smudged and grayish ink on the torn, faded parchment. Where their current tunnel of sandpits terminated, she could barely discern a faded line for a mining cart track that ran through the wall before them.

“How can this be?” Darrel asked aloud, studying the metal arc and its ornamental runes.

“I believe I begin to understand,” Mirra said faintly, standing upright and straining her ears to listen.

In the distance, a rhythmic rumbling suddenly churned up deep within the mines. A steamlike hissing pressed up through the floors, and a great clang and bang rattled dust from the walls.

“As ever, we are at the mercy of Time,” she said, a smirk now gracing her own lips. Darrel quizzed his brow at her, but before he could beg the question a blue ring of light washed across the cavern from behind the wall. It rippled through the sandstone catacombs, and all at once the chamber was transformed into an earthen, fertile tunnelwork that sang with an industrial whistle and drum.

Their crumbling scroll transformed into a clear white grid overlaying a finely detailed schematic of the mining facility on a firm blue parchment. At the top of the parchment, she saw the silvery scrawl of a title for the sprawling complex in Hylian text: the Ghost Mine. Mirra rolled the blueprint back up and fastened it to the quiver over her back.

Before them, the blocked tunnel had open up to reveal a massive central chamber surrounded by a wide wrought bronze catwalk, at the bottom of which stood Jaden and Polaris before a great blackened amethyst statue. Mine carts now whizzed around the catwalk along bronze and steel rails, and the rusted out pipes and panels now hissed and flash with colored lights and steam.

“Hoy, Daybreak!” Mirra called, but the Zora and Sheikah did not turn their heads, seemingly fixated on the gigantic crystal welded to a pedestal before them. In its center, Mirra recognized the Weeping Eye emblematic of the Sheikah tribe.

“What on earth is that thing?” Darrel asked, his mind racing with questions at the sight of the advanced machinery and mechanical wonders they were observing.

“They have been called Timeshift Stones,” Mirra surmised. They were walking down a bronze spiral staircase down to Polaris and Jaden’s level. “At least, I believe as much. I have never seen one up close.”

When they reached their comrades, it was Mirra who had questions now.

“Jaden, Polaris, how did you ignite this beacon? Which one of you summoned the Eye?”

OOC: Mirra leaves Roc with Lia and Hathor and enters the mineshaft with Darrel, Polaris, and Jaden. Inside, they reach a fork in the tunnels, and Darrel has Polaris and Jaden split off to cover more ground, each with a Fairy in a Bottle from Mirra. On their own, Darrel and Mirra find a Dungeon Map, then reunite with Polaris and Jaden in a large central chamber, where they find a spooky Timeshift Stone in the center engraved with a Weeping Eye. When they arrive, Polaris and/or Jaden have already triggered a timeshift in a ripple effect around them, changing the area into a brightly lit electrified mining facility. The mine is revealed to be the Lanayru Mining Facility (aka the Ghost Mine). Mirra asks Polaris and Jaden how they activated the Timeshift Stone.

Normally Jaden wouldn't advocate for splitting up a group, but with the Twili on the march and the undead on their own chaotic warpath, a tactical gamble was worth it. Besides, he was so hypersensitive from consuming a cocktail of stimulants that being around too many people at once would cause him to get careless.

The tunnels had workmanship of a kind Jaden had never seen. While moving at the brisk pace Polaris had set, his low light vision took in all the patterns, cracks, and architectural supports. Natural stone shouldn't do what it was doing here. It gave him ideas for after the war, as the Chieftain had spoken of an expansion of the Redoubt, further underground.

Metal in the cart tracks also appeared to age nicely, and some had broken off. As they approached a section of this track, Jaden noticed a rather odd cleft in between the track and the stone below.

"General, a moment. Something seems off. I'll catch up quick."

Stopping briefly, Jaden was able to manipulate the portion of the track with a small switch that moved its juncture, and found a deep green oxidized metal case with a simple inverted rune on its base, along with a series of four sliding numbered combination locks. It seemed odd, and it gave off an unnatural energy, similar to that of Polaris' essence, but not exactly alike. He didn't say anything, but after putting it in his pack, he saw the General observing him and tapping his foot.

"Now isn't the time to treasure hunt, Jaden. But what you found there, we'll look at that after we get out of here."

Nodding in agreement, Jaden rose to his feet and they kept moving. He lent Polaris some of his enhanced speed to make up for the time. They moved so quickly that triggered traps went off after the pair were well passed. And Polaris artfully dodged Jaden's multiple faceted questions regarding the Chieftain's energy signature he'd felt whilst in the desert. It just didn't make sense, but as the heir, he knew the power behind the ancestral blessing of the First Impa, passed down from Chieftains and Impas across the millennia.

The pair kept going lower into the mine, and it was getting a little harder to see, but before too long, they were at the bottom of a massive chamber, where multiple tracks and trails lay above. But at the center of the room, a metallic glint and a giant gemstone stood. Jaden knew of the history of these stones, but he never thought he'd see one in his lifetime outside of the Redoubt.

"How...none should exist outside Kakariko..."
Jaden felt the energies of Truth surge once more, and the mine came alive, just as the sections of his peoples' inner sanctum would in times of dire need. But he did not trigger the stone.

"Polaris...you..."
If the General didn't set it off, who did? But the power was coming from his direction. Was Truth the secret power of the former Scourge of the Hylians? How did he come across this?

Anyone who wielded Truth took the Oath. The tales of Chieftains and Impas who broke said Oath were tragic. What was happening to his sister, that was nothing compared to those who broke it. To defend Hyrule against all its enemies no matter where they are found and to uphold the Crown of Hyrule's Royal Family no matter the sacrifice. Even if it means acting contrary to convention. The Shadow Folk operated outside the lines, and for good reason.

As mine carts and automatons were hard at work bustling about, Jaden's mind was racing faster than it ever had before. Sobriety heightened his function, the stims and essential oils from his tea had kicked into overdrive, and he was taking everything in around him when he heard Mirra's question. Shouting up to her,

"I am only the heir. That is not a power I wield yet. There's no way Polaris could have done it either, he is not Sheikah. Yet it is active. It is good to see you, though!"
Summary: Jaden and Polaris race to the bottom of the mine. On their way, Jaden notices a fragment of track that had an unusual cleft of stone underneath it. He stops briefly and changes the mine track at a switch before reaching down and finding a heavily oxidized and patina'd box with an inverted rune and four combination locks on it. After collecting it and putting it in his satchel, he imbues Polaris and himself with a Sheikah lunar speed enchantment and they reach the bottom. Upon reaching the central chamber, the pair discover a Timeshift Stone, which activates without Jaden's help, leaving Jaden to believe that only Polaris could have set it off. Yet Polaris is not a Sheikah...hmm...how did it go off?

Lia was still a solid hour from absolute sobriety, though she was more or less back to her normal mental state, exhaustion and grief aside. She now observed her situation, stuck on guard duty to lessen the burden she had made herself into in such a short time.

She loosened and dropped her bindings to the ground, finding them to have been more for her safety during travel than actual restraint. Best to protect the drunks from themselves after all. Lia was contemplating leaving, creating a portal back to assist those headed to Ordon, but she was fairly confident any portal attempts would lead only to disaster. Confident until she felt a surge of magical temporal energy, the kind put out by timestones. Timestones weren’t a common thing in modern Hyrule, but they did still exist, despite what even the oldest of records would have you believe.

Lia had traveled through enough of history to realize where she was. The alcohol had clouded her vision, this was the ancient mining facility. It had just looked like nothing up until now. The next question was also easy to answer, whoever had activated the stone was sheikah in origin or bestowed their power in some way, so likely Polaris or Jaden.

Lia’s own father Tillorn had been sheikah, and one of the gifts he had passed on to Lia and Ithan before his death was the ability to interact with timestones. It had been one of the early drivers of what became a journey through time for both of them. The journey that ended up killing her brother, thanks to a sickness they both developed from time travel. Something that seemed to be kept in check by active time stones. The end result was that the moment the time stone became active, Lia went from half awake and hungover to alert and brimming with energy.

“I think it’s time we went and rejoined your friend Mirra and the rest.” Lia said to her guard companions.

Summary: Lia’s many journeys through time have afflicted her with a time energy sensitivity, so the time stone just rejuvenated her and cured her wicked hangover. She’s getting ready to leave her guard post and join the others.

”We have reached Upper Eldin, sir,” a Twili voice told him, in its strange, slow accent. “You will see the Bridge we spoke of on the horizon ahead.”

Taden studied the layers of cloud that hung over the distant, moonlit horizon. Silver sheets of mist clung to the far, dark ridges. He could not escape the suspicion that something wicked lay not far beyond, some enemy he knew not yet to fear.

Sergeant Heihachi extended a spyglass and passed it to his commander. Taden took it up in both hands and gazed long across the grand stonework contours of the Bridge of Eldin silhouetted in the rising moon.

Their company crested a final ridge before the land fell into a wide bowl overlooking the gates of Eldin Bridge. At this distance, its otherworldly polish seemed to refract the very stars. Far below, the rumble of river rapids echoed against the cliffs like the earth itself were gasping for air.

“When we reach the far side, you will make camp at the cliffs just beyond the bridge’s northern gate. Await Captain Ryssdal’s arrival, and when the time comes, add your infantry to his own.”

The Sergeant puzzled his brow at the abrupt change in plan. “But my liege, you rallied the men to strike by nightfall, to delay not a moment more in this wretched realm, lest it be for death in glory—“

Taden raised one gauntleted hand. “I know what I said.” He tugged the reins of his steed and began to saunter forward. “If the Hylian army should attack before the Captain arrives, you are to fall back in a false retreat until you meet his front lines.”

“A false retreat, my lord?” Heihachi seemed strained to maintain his fealty to Taden’s command, but as Ryssdal had foretold, Kenata’s icon pinned to Taden’s chest held strange sway over the Twili men’s hearts. “Forgive your loyal sergeant, sir, but I am unfamiliar with this tactic.”

“You are not accustomed to battle in narrow canyonlands such as these,” Taden said. “Well did I learn the art of maneuver in the ridge and the valley, fighting alongside Gorons in the War of Four Giants. Tactical evasion will serve you well in these crevices.” Taden folded up the spyglass and returned it to Heihachi.

“Whether Shadow Folk or Mountain, I shudder to make an enemy of ye,” the ghoul chortled.

“That’s enough, Sergeant. You have your orders.”

Taden brought his horse to a halt. Suddenly, on either side of him, there emerged from the shadows a squadron of Twili warriors in dark masks that covered their faces completely, and light armors and fabrics that allowed for near silent movement. Knives and bundles of thin rope lined their belts and arms. Heihachi counted nine total of the shadowy figures, and knew he was in the presence of the Captain’s Guard.

“Lead the men across the bridge and make camp along the northern border.”

As they reached the bridge’s southern gate, they were surprised to find it all but abandoned. Taden dismounted his horse and handed the reins to Heihachi. He pulled the sheathed Aurgelmir from the horse’s saddle and strapped it across his back, then continued towards the cliffs on foot.

“Consider it done, Lieutenant,” he nodded. “But where will you be? The men would have your leadership in battle.”

“And they shall have it, soon enough.”

With that, Taden slinked off towards the cliffside, and behind him, Heihachi could barely discern the nine hunched figures of the assassins following closely behind. Before he could blink, the party had reached the edge of the towering cliffs, and seemed to disappear over its edge into the unforgiving waters below.

Sergeant Heihachi blinked once at the spot where they had disappeared, then proceeded on towards the brick tile leading onto the Bridge, his mind honing in on his mission for the night as the sound of hooves and bootheels began rattling across the stone.

OOC: Taden and his Twili battalion reach Eldin Bridge in the dead of night, and he orders his men to make camp until Simeon’s reinforcements arrive. He departs on a covert mission with nine Twili assassins, descending into the canyons under cover of darkness, while the rest of the troops make their way north along the bridge.

"To think what our Light would do in the Sacred Realm, Talesin. We smite in the name of this land!"

Arcs of blazing sunlight burst forth from Mastigos' Deku staff, lashing in multiple directions. One disintegrated the toppled Golem’s hewn leg as more undead separated themselves from the husk. Others made craters amidst the Kakariko grass as they scoured away more of the undead taint.

"I gather more Light to put an end to it, and await your signal to dispense retribution!"

Balanced precariously upon its one good leg, hunched over so that it would use one arm to hold itself aloft, the Golem raised its free arm, flexing and unflexing its pilfered fingers. But rather than attack, it snatched a redead scuffling past and lifted it into the air, unaffected by its paralyzing shriek. In an instant, the Golem crushed it in that fist, taking the mess of dead flesh back into itself.

Healing itself by resorbing its minions. The wounds that his assault had made began to knit themselves together before his very eyes. From the stump of its knee, a new limb began to form. From its arms and shoulders, new tendrils began to sprout, wriggling sickly in the open air, growing again toward a length at which they could plunge themselves back into the earth and begin to spread anew their taint.

Chamdar backed off, his luminous spear blade spent and his staff once more a staff. The holy energies still suffused him, but even for a Scion the curse of age was not wholly lifted. Between his fights in Sirius’ laboratory and now this, his limbs were leaden and the cuts and bruises he’d taken ached painfully.

He opened his mouth to speak, but found that what issued forth was little more than a rasp. The lightsong, it appeared, had taken its toll. The divine tongue was not meant to be uttered by mortal kind. Not even one such as he. It always extracted its price.

The Golem snatched another passerby, a stalchild this time, and dangled it head first into its mouth, using free arm and teeth to pull it apart at the hip. The top half vanished down its gullet a moment later, consumed to fuel the creature’s return to full strength. The skeletal legs disappeared down its throat a moment later.

All the while, it cast an eye past Chamdar, who was watching in horror. It seemed to sense something about the newcomer, the Terminian with his spectral wraith, all cloaked and hooded, with a phantasmal scythe held crosswise in both unseen hands. The hem of that wraith’s cloak rippled as it seemed to float above a patch of dry earth soiled by congealed blood and the rended limbs of dry corpses. Chamdar too could feel a grim aura about the thing, an essence of bleak gray—cold storm-winds rising.

A reaper. It was death he sensed. Death of a different sort.

The hordes of undead, perhaps sensing the nature of this newcomer in their midst, shrank back from it. The archers and mages continued firing arrows and fireballs into the press, but their bombardment was largely ineffectual.

The reaper, though, that seemed to have a profound influence on the undead horde. One sweep of that scythe-blade, tearing through dead flesh well beyond arm’s reach, and a pair of wailing gibdos not only fell, but turned to ash where they stood, reduced to piles of dust and rotten rags in the dirt as their wails seemed to hang still in the air like a lingering echo.

Forcing the words out of his burning throat, Chamdar croaked to the other two:

“We need to end this here! Herd this filth back toward the Golem!”

“But will that not hasten this creature’s return to full strength?” The Celestial asked, even as he continued to let his light build.

Chamdar shook his head. “If we can put this thing back together, then we can end it with one combined strike!”

Summary: The arrival of Tobias with the Reaper Tuner has significantly changed the situation in HK. He proposes a new plan.

As he and Jaden crept ever deeper into the ruined mine, the light provided by his red ice torches began to overpower and finally overcome the scant ambient light around them so that the corridors they traveled were cast with an eery crimson glow. All the while they walked, Polaris heard, more like felt, if he were being truthful a familiar hum in the back of his mind.

He had been here before, in another time. Another age. He’d withheld that information from his companions, they needn’t know. And yet, the time would soon come where he would have to provide answers. A truth, perhaps, but not the truth, would have to suffice. The risk involved with divulging all was too great. If he were to stand for Order, he would have to keep this and many other secrets to himself. Bile rose up in his throat when he thought about what was to come after this war. What he KNEW was coming. And what he knew he could not stop, lest he set in motion a cataclysmic chain reaction that would alter the entire timeline of land in ways he could not fathom.

He choked down the bile and pushed past Jaden into the vast circular chamber that spread out in the darkness around them. Cursing and making like he was brushing a cobweb from his face, Polaris passed a hand in front of his face awakening the Chieftains Mark. Surveying the ancient chamber, his shoulders sagged. He hadn’t been mistaken, a huge dormant Timestone rested on a pedestal before them.

”I had hoped to forestall this a bit longer…”

He was still muttering to himself when Jaden drew abreast of him. All of his focus was directed to the stone before him. Peering deep inside it, he found the nexus of its power and brushed away the fetters that held it and the rest of the mine inactive. He knew the Sentinel had spoken as the mine jumped to life, but he was one with the buzzing of the stone and the machinery it commanded. He could feel the tendrils of its power spreading out all across the mine, if he were given time to focus he could probably single out each and every one and their destination. Perhaps that would expedite their journey.

“Jaden, Polaris, how did you ignite this beacon? Which one of you summoned the Eye?”

The arrival of the others broke his concentration and slowly, face impassive, he turned to greet them.

"I am only the heir. That is not a power I wield yet. There's no way Polaris could have done it either, he is not Sheikah. Yet it is active. It is good to see you, though!"

”That… is not, entirely true Jaden.”

The seasoned Sheikah wheeled to face him with a look of bewilderment.

Polaris calmly raised a hand to forestall whatever his old protege was about to say.

”Peace Sentinel. Peace.”

Polaris thought that perhaps he had injured the man's pride with his admonition, but there was nothing to be done for it right now.

”I think I have previously stated, I have some experience with Timestones and Time in general. As you’ll recall, I was drawn into the past, and what was a thousand years or more for me was mere months for those gathered here.”

From the energies coursing out through the facility, Polaris could feel that, her faulties seemingly regained, Lia was making her way towards them. As the three who were before him eyed him warily, the General pressed on with his tale, once more reminding himself to gloss over the more… confusing, details of his tale.

”There will be no record of what I am about to tell you, so your histories will be useless to you in this friend.”

Polaris placed a hand gently on the shoulder of the young Bryseis and peered into his eyes, before closing his own and inwardly cursing at the hell he now knew he would have no choice but to let his friend endure. At least there was a happy ending to that horror story.

”When I unwittingly first interacted with a Timestone deep within another ancient vault, the Hyrule I ended up in was on the brink of war. It was viewed as a zero sum game to most in the end, but it wasn’t a complete loss…” Taking a deep breath, he blew it out slowly and removed his hand from Jaden's shoulder and took a step back, passing a hand over his face to fully reveal the Chieftains Mark to all.

The looks of shock and intrigue that crossed over the faces before him was expected and still it left him speechless for a brief moment.

”At the conclusion of that conflict, I embarked on a mission of utmost importance. He who was to become chieftain was among those who traveled with me. As a failsafe in case of his death, this chieftain Marked me as his equal. We walked several of the circles of some hell, fighting off demons and worse until finally we achieved our task.”

With a flick of his wrist Polaris extinguished the red ice torches that his companions still bore, as the last traces of them swirled into mist, he finished his tale.

”We were successful in our mission. And we were trapped. Through magicks I often avoid, I was able to transport my companions out of Perdition and back to their rightful homes. But as with all blood rites, there had to be an anchor for the spell. A sacrifice of sorts. So it was that I heeded Perditions Call and remained among the undead. Without this Mark, I never would have escaped that damnation and I doubt I would have survived the transformation The Wanderer worked in me hours ago. I have not enjoyed deceiving you all, but it was for the greater good. Time however, has forced my hand.”

Once more passing a hand before his face, he nodded. ”Now, as I’m sure there are questions, I’ll have them while we wait for Lady Chiaria.”

Though she had spoken to them as if they were joining her, Lia opted to leave Roc and Hathor at the entrance to the mining facility. They seemed capable enough to handle guard duty on their own, and neither one appeared very well suited to underground passages anyway. She only traveled a few dozen feet into the interior of the mine before halting, feeling a subtle static buzz course through her whole body. She rushed back outside and looked to the sky. Stormclouds. A very rare sight for the desert.

She scanned the area for the familiar life sign she expected to find. Almost instantly she sensed him, but it felt different, hazy and distorted.

“Davus…” Lia muttered. She was feeling at peak power levels but a battle with Davus would surely drag her back down. It was inconvenient and annoying. The clouds slowly coalesced, taking on a humanoid shape as Davus took on physical form. Something he didn’t always have a choice about. At various points in his existence he’d swapped between being able to freely dematerialize into energy, and being locked into a physical body. It seemed at the moment it was the former.

“Today is not the day you think it will be.” He said, notably lacking his normal smugness. He sounded tired, different in a very unsettling but safe way.

“I-” Lia wanted to reply, ask questions, find out what was different before things turned for the worse. But as her life typically stipulated, interruption by the fantastic was her destiny instead. A tear in the air to her left opened, a portal. And out stepped a total stranger. A woman, red haired, fierce looking but also bearing the eyes of someone who hadn’t truly slept in months. Lia felt a familiarity in her but no personal connections came to mind immediately.

Davus seemed equally perplexed by the sudden intrusion on their conversation. But unlike Lia, he clearly recognized the individual instantly. In the most measured tone Lia had ever heard him use, Davus addressed the newcomer.

“Severa. Did your father send you?” Her name was Severa then. Lia knew that name.

“No.” She replied flatly. “She did.” Severa pointed at Lia. Lia’s first instinct was that Severa was mistaken, but within seconds she replaced that with the obvious conclusion - time travel. Or Severa was potentially lying. Lia did a quick scan to check, and was met with the fury of Severa’s eyes. She sensed the scan instantly, and though she didn’t stop it, Lia quickly ceased from the glare alone.

“Well he did send me.” Davus said. “And before we start throwing punches, let me be the first to say that I’m not here to fight. Not here to fight you two at least. You both have plenty of reason to want to fight me of course, but-” Davus was cut off when Severa punched him in the face. He could have dematerialized to stop the blow, but Lia could see that even he knew he deserved it.

“You used me like a hiding place.” Severa said, spitting at the ground by his feet. She referred to back during the Epoch Wars, when Davus had hid his spirit very near Severa, within the horse she used to travel. She had later learned that for a brief time Davus had also harbored his soul inside her body, secretly. Something he had also done with Polaris. He got around.

Lia’s patience was great, but knowing that her allies could very well need her, she wished for events to explain themselves at a faster clip.

“Both of you explain yourselves. Severa, I do not know you. Davus, I do not trust you. Speak.” Lia crossed her arms and waited. Severa went first.

“You already scanned my mind, you know everything you need to know.” Severa said. It was true, Lia had already seen enough to know roughly what Severa had been through, but was hoping to hear it from her instead of just stealing the information. Nonetheless, she nodded, sufficiently satisfied, and turned her attention to Davus.

“Sirius sent me, to help.” Now that was a statement Lia could laugh at, and did. Davus frowned, looking more like a man angry that his favorite clothes were dirty rather than looking like the killer he was. She scanned him, and was shocked to discover the truth was as he said. But she didn’t trust Sirius either, believing him to be indirectly responsible for Ithan’s death.

“I don’t want your help.” Lia said. She was prepared to ditch them both, when the universe again decided to throw another set of ridiculous events at her. The shimmering image of Ithan, of all people, appeared between the three of them. To his left and right were the images of two Zoras, Jeskai and Efran. Oh come on. Lia thought. She didn’t feel ready for this, but had to be. The images only lasted a few seconds, long enough for Lia to look upon her dead brother's face as a telepathic message entered her mind. One insisting that Davus was telling the truth, and to trust him. Severa likewise seemed to have softened her stance, giving Lia the impression that she’d received the same message.

“This is all happening very quickly.” Severa said. “But I can see that perhaps you two need to discuss some things. Lia you don’t know me yet, but I assure you that I’m here because of you.” Severa looked back and forth between Davus and Lia. “They won’t trust you though, Davus. There’s no time to safely convince them. And they don’t know me, I would only be a hindrance.” Lia raised her eyebrows at Severa’s words.

“How do you know of my allies?” She asked. Severa smiled in response.

“You told me all I need to know.” Lia sighed at Severa’s words, growing weary of events that happened out of order. But such was the life of an involuntary time traveler. Severa continued speaking. “We can speak further in time, but for now, you should seek out your allies. I will be there to assist when necessary.” She narrowed her eyes and looked to Davus. “You also should stay behind for now. No amount of explanation will ease them of your presence.”

“Yes, so you’ve said.” Davus said dryly. “Very well.” He vanished into a shower of sparks, his voice echoing on the sandy winds. “I’ll be here when I’m needed.”

“What is the point of all this?” Lia asked Severa.

“To save the world, of course.” Severa replied. Lia smiled a little and turned to enter the mine once more. She looked back at Severa one more time, wondering how her life had gone from living in a secluded psychic village to traveling through time making friends with enemies and strangers. She missed the old days.

Summary: Severa finally arrives back in our reality and has a chat with Lia and Davus, who has revealed himself at last. Thanks to the power of telepathy the mistrust between the three is somewhat resolved, but Lia leaves them both behind for the moment while she treks through the mine to rejoin everyone else.

Severa was left alone with Davus. He was incorporeal, but his presence hung heavy in the air, somewhat literally as clouds still lingered low in the sky. He was plotting his next words carefully, not wanting to be the one who sparked Severa’s ire.

He had only one card to play for getting Severa on his side. But it could break her, and she was still needed, that much he was certain of. He could possess her again, take control, though the concern that she would overpower him in turn lingered. He’d give control back of course, but he was concerned Lia and the others might need help and they wouldn’t get it if Davus was busy fighting Severa.

Severa it seemed was also plotting, but nothing so devious.

“You never acknowledged what I said. Do you remember stalking me, trying to control me?” Severa asked. Davus answered quietly.

“Yes.” Davus anticipated her next question. “I was reborn within the mind of Polaris after you all defeated me. It has been thousands of years and I am....changed. Not willingly but I do not seek to revert the changes either.” Severa didn’t even blink at the answer. Completely normal, practically mundane, for her.

“You have no idea of your true fate.” Severa said. Davus was curious now. His fate was the only question on his mind these days. “I’ve seen a hundred versions of you, and countless more exist. It may not surprise you to learn that in most realities, you’re some variant of the same bloodthirsty killer.” Davus felt uncharacteristically compelled to verbally defend himself.

“I was never bloodthirsty. I was a weapon.”

“Well.” Severa replied. “Most that you kill would be just fine with the word bloodthirsty. And as I was saying, there has been one special version of you. One that seems to have fallen between worlds, forgotten, known as Davie. I’ve never found a version of him alive. He was a watcher, a forgotten spectre guiding travelers like me back to safety.” Her voice grew tense and frustrated. “What I’m saying is that I cannot ever trust you, but I do believe you are different than you were. I think the only person who never truly changes is my father.” She paused to find the words. Her gaze roamed the landscape, as she tried to look away from Davus while speaking, even though he wasn’t even in front of her. “I guess in some twisted way, we are seeking the same short term goal of keeping these people alive. The world wasn’t meant to exist under Twili rule. This one wasn’t.”

“You sound like you are proposing an alliance. I’m shocked.” Davus was still thrown off by his own flippant remarks. Usually his sarcasm was more murderous in origin.

“But the thing is, I can sway them to trust me, or at least ally with me. Nobody in that group is going to give you even a single chance. You will be chased off, or imprisoned, or killed if they can manage it. You’re no Hothnight the Hated, but nonetheless the hatred you have generated is enough to fill a hundred realities.” Severa cleared her throat, suddenly looking very disgusted with herself. “So then I will have to uh...wield you.” Davus took humanoid form on instinct, ready to argue face to face. It was a mistake he should have been ready to avoid. Instantly Severa grabbed his arm with both hands, and he realized she was using the same technology Sirius had earlier. His physical form was being reconstituted into a weapon against his will. He didn’t struggle though, he at least wouldn’t make that mistake. After all, he did refer to himself as a weapon, it was only fitting he supposed.

“I can’t let you out of my sight, and I can’t let you into theirs. This will have to do for now.” Severa looked at the staff with disgust and entered the mine. “And don’t talk. Inanimate objects talking isn’t right.”

Summary: Severa believes Davus won’t attack like he used to, but doesn’t trust him enough to put faith in that belief. She uses technology from Sirius to change Davus’ form into a lightning staff so that she may keep him in her sights without revealing his presence to the group.

It was slow going among the canyonlands, but night impeded the dark interlopers none. Deep in the folds of the Eldin ridge, they moved swift and silent. Overhead, the stars revolved across the nocturnal arc slow and steady, leaving slivers of silver light along the lines of their armor, and their steel. Under foot, whispering ripples of water dripped through cracks to form treacherous puddles and creeks, threatening to snatch them at a toehold and bear them down into the rapids clamoring breathless below. With their gloved and gauntleted hands, they clutched rocks and pressed their chests through narrow walls, moving vertically over the jagged outcrops as much as beside.

“We have no maps of these shadowlands, but they would be of little use down here,” the scout said from a perch, crouched above the muddy chasm the others filtered through in a line. “The Shadowfolk built this stronghold with more than brick and mortar in hand.”

“All maps lie, given time enough,” the elder swordsman, a trusted strategist among the nine, replied. He brought up the rear of the line. “And all great holds have a breach.”

“Quiet,” Taden hushed the men. After hours in the cracks of Eldin, he had grown short with their muttered words in the mirky Twili tongue. “Allow me to concentrate.”

As they clung flat to the wall of a crevice, he bowed his head and let his eyes fall half closed. In time, the thin outlines of objects hanging in the starlight gave way to a faint texture of air rising and fall through the canyons. Extending one hand, he felt the damp currents of heat and cold shift above their heads. He gradually deduced the icy cold paths of the riverbed below, and the warmth of a gathered army in the ridgelines beyond. At last, he felt what resembled the piercing sting of flame, and he clenched his fist shut in the open air. His eyes closed completely, and his mind opened to the eyes of a scorched and tortured prisoner.

”Is this what has kept your inner fire burning?”​

As quickly and quietly as the voice had come to him, it—or she?—faded from Taden's hearing. He opened his eyes, and found the cloaked and hooded visors of his men trained on him throughout his trance.

“We go north from here,” he said. “They are holed up in a gorge above the river’s bank at its widest bend. They are many in number.”

All at once, they melted among the dusk of the shadowlands again, and made their way north into the night.

OOC: Taden and his Twili squadron continue into the canyons, making their way north towards Hidden Kakariko. He uses awareness of the air currents, and a latent telepathic impulse, to get a sense of direction.